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There are plenty of cinema snobs who, sunk in their own prejudice, declare that any Hollywood remake of a European film is bound to be cheaper, nastier, and cruder than the original, or at least ironed out into terminal blandness. Yet there are quite a number of exceptions, with "Sommersby", for example, proving as least as solid and subtle a film as the French original, "The Return of Martin Guerre".

Unfortunately, those snobs have now been supplied with more ammunition by Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman, the stars and producers of "Under Suspicion", a rehash of an extremely accomplished French psychological thriller, Claude Miller's "Garde à Vue" (1981). Once the wrong director has been selected, it's rather hard to turn back and so, instead of Monsieur Miller, his sensitivity for highly-charged dialogue and way with claustrophobia and nuance, we have the blundering Stephen Hopkins. He was responsible for the wonders of "A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child", "Predator 2", and "Lost in Space". Why was Hopkins, the best of whose films is ordinary, hired to construct a film which hangs on psychology and dialogue? Perhaps he was cheap, and so allowed the executive producers to salivate over even bigger pay-packets.

Anyway, Hopkins - after an early stab at ambiguity - renders the implicit explicit (often via flashbacks), leaving less for us to ponder as a dogged cop (Freeman) grills a famous lawyer (Hackman) about rape and murder. The director's crimes also include an inability to advance the action or find the right spot for his camera. At least both stars - playing flawed middle-aged men who keep their failure locked inside - are expert at the art of subtle suggestion, even though Hopkins insists on pushing home exactly what they're suggesting.

Read interviews with Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman, and director Stephen Hopkins.

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