SUSPECT: 30th Anniversary Blu-ray (Tri-Star 1987) Mill Creek Entertainment
Improbable
alliances and bizarre plot twists, disjointedly strung together by screenwriter
Eric Roth, plus a convoluted timeline, all conspire to deprive director Peter
Yates’ Suspect (1987) from achieving
the sort of flourish of exhilaration one might expect from a Washington-based
game of cat and mouse. This one pits careworn public defender, Kathleen Riley
(fetchingly played by Cher) in a staved flagrante delicto with argi-business
lobbyist, Eddie Sanger (Dennis Quaid). The picture wastes far too much time on
establishing Sanger as a smartly turned out ne’er-do-well who will stop at
nothing to sway the vote, even bedding over-the-hill senator, Grace Comisky (E.
Katherine Kerr) – who has absolutely nothing to do with the central plot of Suspect, but lingers on during the first
twenty or so minutes until she unwisely accepts a midnight rendezvous invite
from Sanger in trade for her swing vote on a crucial piece of legislation. The
real beef I have with Suspect is it’s
a mood piece with no plot – or rather, none quite effectively staged, with
Billy Williams’ brooding cinematography and Michael Kamen’s nerve-jangling
underscore carrying the load in this absurdly written, and even more meaninglessly
structured whodunit. Suspect makes
all the lethal mistakes one might ascribe to a low budget B-movie made by a
novice director. It’s much too clever for its own good at moments when it
should simply tell the narrative clearly and far too quick to reach its
implausible denouement when a little more creative storytelling could have been
applied.
There is, as
example, no reason – good or even plausibly superficial – why Sanger, a
self-important and preening peacock on Capitol Hill, utterly bored with his
particular sect of Washington insiders, and, presently ordered to jury duty, should
take an unhealthy interest in the case of one Carl Wayne Anderson (Liam Neeson). This deaf mute vagrant is presently accused
of slitting the gullet of junior law clerk, Elizabeth Quinn (Katie O’Hare),
whose body washed up in the murky surf only inches away from Anderson’s ‘home’
and in whose possession Ms. Quinn’s personal effects, including her driver’s license
and $9.00, police ascertain Anderson as the likely ‘suspect’ for this crime of
murder. Alas, there is no motivation here either. Why should Sanger start
dropping Riley clues as though they were a trail of Pez candy being dispensed
from his amateur-sleuth’s pockets? Kathleen’s legal hands are repeatedly tied
by presiding Judge Matthew Bishop Helms (John Mahoney). What’s he up to? Suspect is so full of red herrings it
ought to have been made (or at least shot) in Rotterdam; director, Yates
digging his creative hole fairly deep in the first eighteen minutes with a lot
of speculation, pure conjecture and total misdirection. His set-up is so contrived
it makes even the novice screenwriter blush; Roth, bouncing about the narrative
map with zero staying power. Establishing mood is one thing. But mood alone
does not help to formulate or fit these disjointed pieces into a jigsaw puzzle so
that, at least in retrospect, the audience can plainly see for themselves how
cleverly misdirected they have been.
We witness
Quinn receive a glowing letter of reference from Justice Lowell (Thomas
Barbour), who warmly bids her and his secretary (Rosemary Knower) a ‘Merry
Christmas’ before sticking a double-barrel shotgun in his mouth and blowing his
brains out right in his office. We fast track to the Potomac River where some
saggy-nipple men from the local Polar Bear Club are indulging in their ritual
frigid dip. Suddenly Quinn’s gruesome remains are discovered tangled in the raw
sewage sloshing against the docks. Cut to Riley, ruthlessly robbed of her neatly
wrapped packages by a pair of punks, who smash a brick against her car windshield;
then, gutsily snatch her Christmas booty from its front seat in broad daylight
while she is gridlocked in heavy traffic. Is there a point to this vignette?
Not really, but it sets up the premise that in D.C. life is cheap and
disposable…kind a’ like this movie, although the audience is as yet unaware. Another flash forward and police have their
man – barely. Anderson – emotionally disturbed
and frightened – is not about to go quietly. He takes a gut-slicing stab at
officers come to search the metal pipe he calls home, discovering Quinn’s purse
in his possession. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Sanger is busy trying to woo
Sen. Comisky. He needs her swing vote badly. He has the crocodile charm of a
flatterer alright. But Comisky, despite her protestations and promises for
being a ‘straight arrow’ is nevertheless interested in Sanger’s suggestion they
take a fast cab to his place because she has ‘nice blue eyes’…even if she is old enough to be his mother. This
fairly antiseptic ‘seduction’ that
follows is mercilessly cut short; Yates, having at least the base decency and
good taste to abstain from such obviousness and a more graphic explanation to
assert for his audience that as far as Washington is concerned, everything is
for sale.
The setup for Suspect’s MacGuffin is fairly good. No
one really cares about Quinn’s murder; the victim quickly becoming an
afterthought in the rear view as Yates continues to set up two sides to the
Washington establishment; the proverbial ‘haves’ and have nots’ and those tenuously
perched to lose even this marginal toehold in this ‘politics as usual’ den of
thieves. Eric Roth’s screenplay is desperate to mix political intrigue with
murder and a roiling romance between his pair of antagonistic protagonists.
Cher and Dennis Quaid have something they can loosely lay claim to as screen
chemistry – her half more believable than his; butting heads, sassing each
other, and finally – predictably - the gallant coming to the ‘damsel in
distress’ in an improbable cliffhanger almost immediately dispatched
thereafter. But honestly, Suspect should
have had a lot more going for it than this. Lest we forget Peter Yates is the
director of Bullitt (1968); that
iconic police procedural starring Steve McQueen. It’s too easy to suggest if
Yates and McQueen had paired again, than Suspect
would be a better thriller. Cher is a formidable talent. But she lacks a remarkable
partner to spar with here. Quaid is ineffectual at practically every turn; even
as he briefly sheds his shirt for a flash of those trademarked washboard abs so
our winsome Kathleen can treat his superficial gash inflicted by Michael (Paul
D'Amato) – yet another vagrant who Riley was supposed to defend, except that he
skipped out on her, only to resurface with possible ‘vital’ information
regarding the ‘real killer’ in her current and chronically stymied defense of
Anderson.
Lowell’s
suicide is never revisited in this movie; his death, too conveniently
summarized by the late man himself in a recording discovered by Riley, still in
the tape deck of Quinn’s abandoned Honda Civic and clearly labeled as
incriminating evidence. Riley takes a crowbar to the driver’s side window to
gain access to this crucial clue, rather idiotically stumbled upon without
actually knowing about it beforehand. Okay, so Riley’s not your conventional
public defender. Actually, she is not very good at her job either; relying
almost exclusively on Sanger’s clumsy shadowing while constantly planting her
own feet into one steamy pile after another in Washington’s closeted cesspool.
Late in act three Yates and Roth attempt to embroil Deputy Attorney General
Paul Gray (Philip Bosco) in the concealment of a forty year old case that
allowed both Justice Lowell and Judge Helm to ascend to their present status as
untouchables of the D.C. hoi poloi. Actually, poor ole Gray had nothing to do
with any of it. But it makes for a calculating bit of misdirection – too little
too late to have any effect at all.
So, to recap:
just prior to the Christmas holidays a prominent U.S. Supreme Court Justice
takes his own life. The plot thickens – or rather, curdles – as his file clerk,
Elizabeth Quinn turns up in the Potomac River with her throat slit from ear to
ear; the crime easily pinned on Carl Wayne Anderson, a deaf mute homeless man
in possession of her personal effects when police conduct their search for
clues. D.C. public defender, Kathleen Riley is reluctantly assigned to the case
by Judge Helms, who thereafter denies her the necessary concessions she asks
for in order to prepare an accurate defense strategy. Meanwhile on Capitol
Hill, wily whip Eddie Sanger sleeps with a middle-aged congresswoman to get her
vote on a crucial piece of legislature. Seconded to jury duty in the case
against Anderson, Sanger takes an uncanny interest in acting as his own
Sherlock Holmes, discovering Quinn’s Honda abandoned in a desolate K Street
paid parking lot. He also trades his shoes and socks to a homeless woman to
gain possession of a rare cufflink he believes belongs to Quinn’s murderer.
Sharing his findings with Riley, Sanger is admonished for his unethical assistance
– tantamount to jury tampering if Helms finds out.
Indeed, as the
evidence gathered by Sanger and Riley begins to point to Deputy Attorney
General Paul Gray, Helms grows increasingly suspicious of Riley’s extracurricular
friendship with Sanger. The pair breaks into the Justice Department after
discovering Quinn’s private key, only to learn whatever files were once stored
in this security box have since been transcribed to a computer disc locked away
somewhere else and to which no external access can be gained. Turning to a
cryptic case file from 1968, Sanger and Riley are spotted together in the
library research room; Riley’s quick thinking delaying Helms’ impression they
have come there together in search of clues. Nevertheless, Helms sequesters the
jury to prevent Riley from having any further contact with Sanger outside the
courtroom for the remainder of the trial. Believing Gray was likely the prosecutor on
the ’68 trial, and therefore behind Quinn’s murder to keep his rigged case a
secret, Riley makes the utterly idiotic decision; first, to break into Quinn’s
impounded car, where she discovers Lowell’s taped confession (how convenient),
and second, to hurry along to Helms’ home on the eve of a party, and where Gray
is a guest, to divulge her findings. At the last possible moment, Riley gets
cold feet – looking far more inept than she ought. She withdraws from Helms’
home without confiding anything.
Instead, Riley
confesses her findings to colleague, Morty Rosenthal (Fred Melamed) at her
office, suddenly remembering she has left her case book at the courthouse.
Presumably, this will confirm her suspicions. Leaving Morty to wait for her
return Riley hurries to the courthouse after hours and, too late, realizes she
has been tailed by the real killer. Skulking down narrow corridors and racing
through a series of offices, Riley barely escapes her assailant by slipping
into an elevator with Anderson’s weapon from the evidence room. The elevator
car stops on a curiously vacant floor of jail cells, even more oddly unmanned at
their command center; again, allowing the cloaked assassin to make chase
through this maze of bars. Meanwhile, fearing for Riley’s safety, Sanger
deliberately sets off the fire alarm in the jury’s sequestered hotel, sneaking
out undetected. And although he knows nothing of Kathleen’s whereabouts, a
quick phone call to her office alerts him to the danger she is in. Sanger
arrives just in time as Riley is attacked. Resourceful at last, she slices into
her attacker’s wrist with Anderson’s blade. The unknown man flees and Sanger is
allowed to play hero. The next day, Helms proceeds to bring about a swift
resolution to Anderson’s trial – determined to garner a conviction. He is
startled to discover Gray in the gallery at Riley’s request. Now, Riley calls
Helms as one of her material witnesses. Talking over his strenuous objections,
she exposes him as the prosecutor in 1968 that fixed the trial and doctored the
official records thereafter to profit by this deceit. At the same time, Helms’
wrist wound reopens, revealing to all he is the man who attacked Riley the
night before, and, in fact, murdered Quinn to silence her discovery of his treasonous
actions so long ago. Vindicated in her
assumptions, Riley and Anderson tearfully embrace. Sometime later, Sanger turns
up in Riley’s public defender’s office, suggesting they finally consummate the
affair he would have liked all along. Riley laughingly agrees and Sanger closes
the door behind him.
Suspect is a terribly botched thriller. Thanks to Billy
Williams’ cinematography and a fairly competent performance by Cher, the
picture is not a total washout. But its Swiss cheese of a plot is so faulty in
its premise; so woefully underwhelming and poorly designed to misdirect the
audience with fake clues in lieu of cleverly plotted ones that will actually
add up to something more than the sum of its parts, Suspect dies slowly and painfully, wearing out its two hour run
time by at least a half hour. The implausibility of a wayward Washington whip
suddenly becoming John Q. Public: proactive citizen - is weakly scripted. And
to simply write off Sanger’s overzealousness as a means to get in Riley’s pants
is the flimsiest motivation. There is zero chemistry between Cher and Dennis
Quaid, chiefly because he is much too in love with his own cocky caricature to
afford his co-star the same Cher doles out with monumental humility. Quaid just
cannot wait for the subtler moments to pass so he can grandstand his way into
some clumsily conceived heroics. These thoroughly undermine Riley’s aptitude;
not just as a public defender, but as a woman. What? She has to have the
amateur sleuth spoon-feed her clues? Are we serious about this? Indeed, left to
her own accord Riley would have surely allowed Anderson to fry for Quinn’s
murder; not because she believed in his guilt, but rather, because of her
powerlessness to prove his innocence. In the end, I suspect that Suspect is
the kind of thriller one can only find moderately stimulating when all logic is
traded for sheer performance. Director Peter Yates does get some economy from
at least one of his stars and his own level of competency in assembling a few
nail-biting vignettes along the way. Ultimately, he never connects the dots
sufficiently to allow the audience in on his hairpin turns merely added as
though he is assembling track on a theme park haunted house while the dark ride
is in progress. It doesn’t work and Suspect
is a middling effort from an A-list director and star who should have known
better.
I can state as
much about Mill Creek’s thoroughly abysmal 30th Anniversary Blu-ray
of Suspect. I am sketchy on what studio
has provided the 1080p elements for this transfer. Sony ought to be in control
of the Tri-Star catalog. But this Blu-ray exhibits none of their hallmarks in
creating immaculate hi-def transfers for third party distributors. Are we
really at the tail end of 2017 and still having to contend with vintage catalog
looking digitally harsh and grainy, riddled in age-related artifacts, and edge,
aliasing and halo effects?!? Really? Are we? For starters, let’s just get off
the pot about labeling substandard dreck like this, with virtually NO extra
features, as an ‘anniversary’
edition. What is there to celebrate here? Hmmm?
On the plus
side: Suspect’s palette of colors is
fairly vibrant if slightly boosted; flesh tones more pinkish than is
permissible. Fine detail in close-up is impressive, but again, digitally harsh,
suggesting untoward tinkering. The image has a highly processed look, as is
evident in long shots where vertical and horizontal details in buildings or the
courtroom paneling uncontrollably shimmer; ditto for herring bone fabrics.
There is nothing film-like about this presentation. While age-related artifacts
are present throughout, on occasion they are downright thick and very
distracting. The audio is a feeble 2.0 stereo; dated and sounding exceptionally
tinny. The final insult: this disc boots up automatically – no chapter stops (other
than arbitrarily advanced via one’s remote, and with the added nuisance of
beginning with the subtitle feature turned ‘on’.
At the end of the feature we do get a very basic menu with a ‘play’ and ‘subtitle’ button, but neither is accessible at the start or
throughout the feature. You have to wait for the end. Dumb, idiotic
engineering! Bottom line: Suspect is
a middling thriller with a piss poor transfer and very silly disc authoring. If
you are a fan of this movie, this isn’t the way to cherish it for years to
come. Regrets.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
2.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
2.5
EXTRAS
0
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