Under Suspicion

This sweaty two-hander about a police interrogation is a remake of Garde à Vue, Claude Miller's claustrophobic 1981 suspenser, relocated from provincial France to a small Caribbean island in carnival week. World-weary cop Freeman invites bigwig lawyer Hackman down to the station for some routine inquiries which turn out to be anything but. Three young girls have been raped and murdered in the past month, and the suspect's stumbling account of his movements serves only to heighten his inquisitor's conviction of the man's guilt. Circumstantial evidence, however, will have to be backed up by some notion of motive. From here, the psychology starts getting rather murky. You can understand the stars' attraction to the material, since it obviously offers a good chew on middle-aged regrets, sexual guilt and frustration, a rich old stew. All director Hopkins had to do was put these two guys in a room together, turn them loose and watch the fur fly, right? Well, you would think so, but what the maestro of Lost in Space actually does is to open out the action at every opportunity, revel in gimmicky flashbacks and sensationalise the lurid background detail, leaving the gritty central performances to go for very little.