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Suspect
Suspect
	Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Peter Yates
Written by	Eric Roth
Produced by	Daniel A. Sherkow
Starring	Cher; Dennis Quaid; Liam Neeson; John Mahoney; Joe Mantegna;
Cinematography	Billy Williams
Edited by	Ray Lovejoy
Music by	Michael Kamen
Production; company	ML Delphi Premier Productions
Distributed by	Tri-Star Pictures
Release date	October 23, 1987;
Running time	121 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$14.5 million
Box office	$18,782,400

Suspect is a 1987 American legal mystery thriller film directed by Peter Yates and starring Cher, Dennis Quaid, and Liam Neeson. Other notable cast members include John Mahoney, Joe Mantegna, Fred Melamed, and Philip Bosco.

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).

Eddie Sanger (Dennis Quaid) failed to get out of jury duty but impressed Riley with his extreme attention to detail. Riley did not believe the homeless man 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 - Kathleen Riley
Dennis Quaid - Eddie Sanger
Liam Neeson - Carl Wayne Anderson
John Mahoney - Judge Matthew Bishop Helms
Joe Mantegna - Charlie Stella
Philip Bosco - Paul Gray
E. Katherine Kerr - Grace Comisky
Fred Melamed - Morty Rosenthal
Bernie McInerney - Walter
Bill Cobbs - Judge Franklin
Richard Gant - Everett Bennett
Paul D'Amato - Michael John Guthridge
Thomas Barbour - Justice Lowell
Katie O'Hare - Elizabeth Quinn
Jim Walton - Helms' Court Marshal
Michael Beach - Parking Lot Attendant
Ralph Cosham - Judge Assel Stewart
Djanet Sears - 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."^[2]

In the Los Angeles Times, film critic Sheila Benson wrote:

As it speeds toward its finale, there are plot holes the size of Manhattan potholes, although it is refreshing to have so menacing a thriller with such a relatively low level of violence. And there isn't a car chase from start to finish--amazing restraint from the director of Bullitt, and a positive point of pride these days. This is one to enjoy, but not to question too closely.^[3]

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.^[4] 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".^[5] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.^[6]