Suspect (1987 film)

Plot

A law clerk stumbled onto something while working on the transcripts of a 17-year old case. She approached the trial judge, who gave her a cassette tape before committing suicide. The clerk was found murdered shortly after.

A homeless man was accused of the murder after being caught with the clerk’s wallet and a large knife. To face trial, the homeless man was assigned a public defender, Kathleen Riley (Cher).

Political lobbyist Eddie Sanger (Dennis Quaid) wanted to get out of jury duty but impressed Riley with his extreme attention to detail. Riley did not believe the homeless man, a violent left-handed deaf-mute Vietnam veteran, was the murderer and reluctantly teamed up with Sanger hoping to find the real murderer. Judge Matthew Helms (John Mahoney) wanted a speedy trial for personal reasons and denied Riley’s request for more time to investigate the death of a potential witness.

Riley discovered the cassette tape in the law clerk’s car and listened to the confession recorded by the judge who committed suicide. Armed with the tape, Riley revealed in court that Helms was the prosecutor "fixing" the case discovered by the law clerk. Riley further revealed that Helms was the real murderer.

Cast

• Cher as Kathleen Riley
• Dennis Quaid as Eddie Sanger
• Liam Neeson as Carl Wayne Anderson
• John Mahoney as Judge Matthew Bishop Helms
• Joe Mantegna as Charlie Stella
• Philip Bosco as Paul Gray
• E. Katherine Kerr as Grace Comisky
• Fred Melamed as Morty Rosenthal
• Bernie McInerney as Walter
• Bill Cobbs as Judge Franklin
• Richard Gant as Everett Bennett
• Paul D'Amato as Michael John Guthridge
• Thomas Barbour as Justice Lowell
• Katie O'Hare as Elizabeth Quinn
• Jim Walton as Helms' Court Marshal
• Michael Beach as Parking Lot Attendant
• Ralph Cosham as Judge Assel Stewart
• Djanet Sears as Message Clerk

Reception

The film's climactic scene (in which the actual murderer is revealed) was panned by Roger Ebert, whose review noted that it is "as if an Agatha Christie novel evaluated six suspects in a British country house, and then in the last chapter we discover the killer was a guy from next door."

In the Los Angeles Times, film critic Sheila Benson wrote: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 67%, based on 18 reviews, and an average rating of 6.16/10. On Metacritic — which assigns a weighted mean score — the film has a score of 53 out of 100 based on 13 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

References

References

1. "Suspect (1987)".
2. "Suspect (1987)".
3. (4 September 2012). "Leonard Maltin's 2013 Movie Guide: The Modern Era". Penguin.
4. Ebert, Roger. (October 23, 1987). "Suspect". Ebert Digital LLC.
5. [[Sheila Benson]]. (October 22, 1987). "MOVIE REVIEW : PLAUSIBILITY BECOMES 'SUSPECT' IN DRAMA".
6. "Suspect (1987)". [[Fandango Media]].
7. "Suspect Reviews". [[Fandom, Inc.]].
8. "Home".