Movie Review: Above Suspicion (2019)

Genre: Crime Drama  

Director: Phillip Noyce  

Starring: Emilia Clarke, Jack Huston, Thora Birch, Johnny Knoxville  

Running Time: 104 minutes  

Synopsis: In rural and economically depressed Pikeville, Kentucky, Susan Smith (Emilia Clarke) is a young single mom, addicted to drugs and surrounded by good-for-nothing men including abusive ex-husband Cash (Johnny Knoxville). Dashing and newly-minted FBI agent Mark Putnam (Jack Huston) arrives in town with his wife and child, eager to build a career reputation. He uses Susan as an informant to nab a bank robber, with Susan willing to snitch on her community in the hope that Mark will provide her an escape and a fresh start. They embark on a torrid affair with no good outcomes.

What Works Well: Based on actual events, this drama benefits from a ramshackle small town milieu harbouring dark ambitions. Susan is willing to do anything to escape Pikeville, and Mark is just as eager to place this backwater of a stepping stone behind him and move up in his career. They use each other in an unspoken pact of mutual manipulation. Emilia Clarke obliterates her Englishness and sinks into an epic white trash performance, her narration augmenting a script dripping with weary wisdom.

What Does Not Work As Well: Neither Susan, a drug addicted welfare cheat and homewrecker, nor Mark, an immoral exploiter, represent remotely sympathetic characters. Not unexpectedly, the drama flails in an unappealing morass of distasteful behaviour.

Key Quote:
Susan (narrating): That's the way the devil comes. He don't come to you as evil. He don't come to you on fire. He comes as everything you ever wanted. He comes to you as you.



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Movie Review: Night Train To Lisbon (2013)

A morose political drama and romance, Night Train To Lisbon packs in plenty of plot but remains more ponderous than provocative.

In Berne, grey professor Raimund (Jeremy Irons) rescues a woman before she can jump off a bridge. She promptly flees, and in her coat pocket Raimund finds a book and a train ticket to Lisbon. Impulsively he hops onto the train, and en route reads the book, which turns out to be a memoir by Amadeu (Jack Huston), a young aristocratic Portuguese doctor. Raimund is deeply affected by the lyrical prose, and in Lisbon goes looking for the author. He visits Amadeu's sister Adriana (Charlotte Rampling), and learns that the doctor died in 1974.

Through a fortuitous accident Raimund meets optometrist Mariana (Martina Gedeck), whose uncle João (Tom Courtenay) knew Amadeu. Raimund also talks to Amadeu's teacher, the priest Father Bartolomeu (Christophe Lee). Slowly Raimund pieces together the history of a group of idealistic college graduates involved in the underground resistance against the Salazar dictatorship in the early 1970s. The group consisted of Amadeu, his best friend Jorge (August Diehl), João and the beautiful Estefânia (Mélanie Laurent). As Raimund learns about the struggles and loves of the young activists, he questions his own restrained life.

An adaptation of the Pascal Mercier novel directed Bille August, Night Train To Lisbon has ambitions to be an intellectual and literary mystery. While the tone is earnest, the pacing thoughtful, and the content rich, the film also leans towards excessive self-absorption. August succumbs early and often to narration consisting of excerpts from Amadeu's book that may or may not be profound, but are certainly out of place. And Raimund's entire search-for-identity quest is off target, his suddenly instinctive and persistent actions inconsistent with the character.

The girl-on-the-bridge opening is a beguiling mystery, but the film takes far too long to circle back to the incident, and overall no one in Lisbon appears to hesitate before revealing long held personal secrets to the inquisitive stranger from Berne. And far too much time is spent with Raimund going back and forth between Adriana and Jorge, the plotline revealed through intentionally interrupted drips that may work on the written page but not in a 110 minute screen treatment.

The flashback scenes, where the film spends a good half of its running time, come with their own problems. The acting talent is generally about two levels down from the likes of Jeremy Irons, Charlotte Rampling and Christopher Lee, and the young activists appear to exist out of context. August spends next to no time establishing the framework of the Salazar regime, and tries to fit a full plot about young anti-government agitators, complete with a love triangle, into half of a movie's length. Not unexpectedly it all comes across as half-baked and borderline amateurish.

Night Train To Lisbon has good intentions to recount a worthwhile story, but is thwarted by clumsy execution.

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