The first must-see film of the year.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

While attending at a fund raising ceremony, Henry is asked to pay a very short visit to the local police station for a couple of questions but the situation escalates quickly, Henry being accused of raping and murdering two small girls. He's forced to stop lying once he figures out that the police mean serious business but whether he is the actual culprit or whether he is hiding something else is left to be discovered and revealed by the detectives. His social life is being jeopardized but also his relation with his gorgeous wife who doesn't know what to think about her husband.It's a psychological thriller, full of confusion, mystery and unexpected disclosures. It manages to draw all your attention, making you eager to discover its unpredictable finale. As a minus, it is a bit too boring in some scenes, slightly reducing its rating but overall it's a great watch.

If Stephen Hopkin's Under Suspicion were a meal I was served at a restaurant, I would throw it against the wall, flip the table, walk promptly back to the kitchen and knock the chef out cold. It's a hollow, pointless piece, like digging into a pie that's put before you only to find that under that layer of crust there's no filling, only air. The premise is promising: wealthy businessman Gene Hackman who has political ties is grilled out of the blue by longtime friend and police detective Morgan Freeman and his partner Thomas Jane, regarding the murder of a thirteen year ago old girl in the slums of San Juan. Hackman is a successful, assured alpha socialite, and these type of men always have some type of close guarded secret which comes to light. Freeman is a dogged working man who probes him until it almost seems personal rather than routine. Sounds terrific, right? You would think. The acting is of course fine, as these guys couldn't miss a beat if they tried, but the way the story is set up just rips the viewer off blind. These two thespians soar spectacularly, but their duel is structured around purposefully unreliable flashbacks, beating around the bush and oodles of red herrings that treat the audience like sixth graders watching a low rent magician at a birthday party. Hackman has a pretty trophy wife (Monica Belluci, underused) and a host of personal demons that he projects onto Freeman's simple blue collar rhetoric like a defence mechanism. None of these narrative fireworks can save it though, especially when an ending rolls around that is the very definition of a letdown, through and through. In an attempt to explore the forces that drive a man to the edge of admitting guilt whether he is responsible or not, the filmmakers miss the boat on providing a focused treatise that takes itself seriously with these potentially fascinating themes, instead settling on an overcooked, ultimately vacant that could have been so much more.

I watched this movie and I was totally befuddled by the ending. What is the relationship between Hackman's character and Belucci's? They knew each other when Chantal was very young and then they married later, but at a later point they stop conjugal relations and have no children. Even when they no longer conjugate, however, Chantal still allows her husband to kiss her and zip up her dress and to appear in public together; maybe it's not much, but it seems to contraindicate that Chantal "sets up" her husband.During the interrogation, Chantal spits in disgust at her husband's admissions that he likes young women. Again, this indicates that it is a spontaneous reaction to the her husband's admissions and it is not a premeditated set-up of her husband.Apparently, Chantal stops sleeping with her husband when she finds him spending intimate (but not physical) time with her niece. Maybe she despises his attraction to young girls and she won't compete for her husband's affections.If Chantal has a problem with her husband's behavior, it could indicate that she might possibly be a murderess who wants to eliminate her competition because of jealousy and anger. This is the only reason I see for Hackman's character to confess to a murder he didn't commit -- to save his wife from prosecution. He never "cracks" prior to this!When the real murderer is caught, Chantal realizes how much her husband really loves her that he was willing to take the fall for her. When she contemplates suicide, it might be on account of the pain she caused him, but she decides it is better to respond to his love. Hackman's character leaves the police station as a free man, but avoids his wife. Why would he avoid her? It is true she allowed police to search the house, but with the mountain of circumstantial evidence against him, it seemed necessary and reasonable to do this. On the other hand, she didn't back up her husband when he needed it most, (although a search warrant would have rendered her decision moot.)Maybe both characters are flawed, Hackman's with his obsession for young girls and being unfaithful (caused by his wife's rejection of him physically?), and Chantal with her jealousy and rejection of her husband. If so, this movie seems to depict how difficult it is for two people to stay the course and to love each other without reservation (especially when there is a 25-30 year difference in ages between the wedded!) The only thing I can think of is that Chantal's husband realized that a woman who would shun her husband while being married isn't really in love with her husband, no matter how much she is loved first. Maybe Chantal is getting older and her husband no longer finds her attractive? Maybe the original marriage was based on the age difference and after he made the ultimate sacrifice for his wife, he found out she wasn't really worth it?The ending seems to evoke despair over the possibility of love's triumph, even while one makes the ultimate sacrifice for it? Lastly, I thought Thomas Jane's character was called "Opie," not "O.B." referring to Andy Griffith's TV son in Mayberry, as a sort of snide reference to the detective's unsophisticated, clumsy, yokel kind of way of doing his job.

Great performances do not, of themselves, make a great film. Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman, great actors, deliver fine, nuanced performances, and Tom Jane and Monica Bellucci also do very well in this rather low key thriller which has almost disappeared off the filmographies of all concerned.I said, "thriller", but that is part of the problem here. The pursuit of Hackman's attorney as prime suspect in the paedophile murders of young girls in San Juan, and the subsequent discovery of elements of his character and his relationships with Freeman's police chief and Bellucci's trophy wife appear, at first sight, to be the substance of a thriller, and maybe they are. But the film does not conclude as a thriller might be expected to.It is strange how much the lack of a satisfactory resolution can have a bearing on one's enjoyment of a film. The last five minutes here left me scratching my head at what had just happened and why. And my inability to accept the conclusion - specifically (spoiler) Hackman's decision to admit the accusation against him - devalued what came before.This film did not work for me.