Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
A lawyer is asked to come to the police station to clear up a few loose ends in his witness report of a foul murder. "This will only take ten minutes", they say, but it turns out to be one loose end after another, and the ten minutes he is away from his speech become longer and longer.
Under Suspicion is a claustrophobic interrogation thriller anchored almost entirely by the performances of Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman, whose cat-and-mouse dynamic elevates what is otherwise a fairly conventional procedural. The plot, adapted from the French film Garde à vue, follows a well-worn single-location pressure-cooker structure that offers few genuine surprises until the twist ending, which lands with moderate impact but feels somewhat telegraphed. Cinematography is functional and serviceable for the confined setting, using close-ups effectively to heighten tension without doing anything particularly distinctive. Novelty is low — the film is a remake of a respected French original and treads familiar psychological thriller territory without reinventing it. The performances, particularly Hackman's layered and increasingly unraveling suspect, are the clear standout and push the film well above its middling reputation.