Under Suspicion

Under Suspicion is a psychological crime drama that is not particularly successful. Action director Stephen Hopkins is playing away from home with this chamber piece, which takes place almost entirely in the same room at a police station. That does not stop the director from trying to pep the film up by every trick in the book, so that at the beginning you are led completely astray and come to believe that you are about to watch a dynamic thriller. It is an unfortunate start.

Under Suspicion is an unpleasant and probing story about the investigation of two murders of two very young teenage girls in Puerto Rico. Police officer Victor Benezet asks the esteemed lawyer Henry Hearst, one of Puerto Rico's leading citizens, to come into his office for a short chat. It was Hearst who found the body, but Benezet cannot make Hearst's account tally with his neighbours' accounts. Under pressure from Benezet and his subordinate Owens, Hearst soon becomes entangled in a web of lies, but also of some gruesome truths, among other things about his marriage to the much younger Chantal. Gradually neither Benezet nor Owens is in any doubt that they have the right man. Is a confession near?