Good start, but then it gets ruined

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

This plot-driven story is better than I'd expected it to be. The story is this. An efficient, highly respected cop, Chris Reeves, must cover for his inept younger brother on the same police force. While doing so on one occasion, he is shot by the perp and paralyzed from the waist down. He's retired from the force and is cared for at home by his wife.Reeves passes through various stages of depression and becomes suicidal. He calls his wife (Cattrall) and his brother Nick (Kerr) together for a talk and tells them that he's concocted a plan to fake his own murder. He's taken out mucho life insurance with his wife, his brother, and his son as beneficiaries. He wants them to establish an alibi, then break into his house as if they were burglars, and shoot him in the head. Double indemnity will then apply and his family will be well off, and he'll avoid the shame of having killed himself.Now -- watch it here, because there be spoilers ahead, important ones.Kerr and Cattrall are not what they seem. Kerr is a shallow guy, a total failure at everything he's tried, despite his brother's help -- self absorbed and naive, and he's been boffing Reeve's wife for some time. Cattrall is the meaner of the two, self pitying, horny, and greedy enough to agree without reservations to Reeve's suicid-by-burglar scheme.The thing is, Reeves KNOWS all this and has set them up. The guns they've been instructed to use are unloaded, whereas Reeves' pistol is ready to go. Furthermore -- look, mein Fuhrer, he can WALK. Clumsy but ambulatory. So instead of their shooting him, he kills them and claims self defense.Everyone believes him except another cop, Joe Montegna, who can't quite shake the suspicion that Reeves has done exactly what he has in fact done. He comes in for a lot of dish from the rest of the force because they all hold Reeves in esteem. Montegna sticks on the case even though his superiors order him not to. His final attempt to prove Reeves is lying fails and he winds up in the slams and then dismissed from the force.Reeves and his son end up playing baseball together and living happily ever after. Reeves presumably will later learn to walk again in public. And there is that pretty next-door neighbor.It's a pretty good movie. I'll try to make my explanation for that statement brief. As in actual life, nobody is either entirely good or bad. They are all ambiguous characters. Reeve's younger brother may be weak, but he's unable to shoot his brother when he tries. Reeve's wife may be unfaithful to him, but she has a decent job, does what she can to help him, and apparently loves their son. Reeves' motives are understandable, but excessive by any measure. And the movie itself ends with a murderer getting away with it. Not only that, but Montegna, the only detective who sees through Reeves, must leave in disgrace.Some effort has gone into the plot, and into the dialog as well. When Montegna begins pushing recklessly into Reeves' status as suspect, the other cops deride him. A fellow officer sarcastically tells him, "You know, you're an obsessive compulsive. You got this obsessive thing. My wife always said you were compulsive. No wonder your wife left you. But the good news is -- you can get help." The photography and score aren't very impressive. The acting is good on everyone's part. The movie breaks the usual mold from which such movies are cast.Of course it's painful to see Reeves playing a paraplegic. His Superman movies were funny, but only because they were jokes. He was able to put in a good dramatic turn from time to time, as in this movie or in "Street Smarts." And makeup has given him an unfashionable haircut, the kind a cop might have rather than a movie star.Well worth catching.

***SPOILERS*** Being highly successful in everything that he did, from the top of his class in collage a top Jet pilot and law enforcement officer, Dempsey Cain, Christopher Reeve,is the exact opposite of his younger brother Nick, Edward Kerr. Nick also a member of the San Sebastian police department like Dempsey is a total failure when compared to his older brother.One evening at a police shooting, the cop ended up dead, Dempsey calls Nick on his personal beeper and gets no answer. It turned that Nick was at Dempsey's house having an sexual tryst with his cheating and unfaithful wife Gail, Kim Cattrail. The next day the police. led by Det. Cain, track down the cop killers in a hotel room and just when their about to make the pinch Nick's beeper goes off, alerting the fugitives. The resulting shootout ends with Dempsey getting shot in the spine and ending up crippled from the waist down.At the inquest following the shooting Dempsey covered up the fact that his brother's incompetence, leaving his beeper on, was responsible for the shootout. Taking the blame himself for it saying that the noisy beeper was his not Nick's Dempsey forgave his brother for his career ending injuries but not for his sleeping with his wife. Dempsey then concocted a devious and sinister plan to make them both pay for what they did to him with their lives.Checking Nick's phone bill Dempsey found out that he called his answering service from his, Dempsey's, home at 2:30 AM. Dempsey realized that Nick was having an affair with his wife at the time that the young cop was shot and killed and that illicit affair had been going on for some time.Putting on an act that he was despondent with his life as a paraplegic Dempsey get's both Nick and Gail to go along with a plan where he's killed, by them, in a burglary and having insured himself for $1,000,000.00 with a double indemnity clause, excluding suicide. The two would both get double the amount and that would also take care of his and Gail's son Damnon, Blake Foster,college and financial future. Getting everything ready for the big night, Friday July 15, 1994,when Dempsey is supposed to be killed Nick & Gail get the surprise of their life. They realize, only too late, that's it's them not Dempsey who's to end up on a cold slab at the local morgue with the insurance policy as the air-tight evidence that they had a financial motive to kill him. The second half of the movie "Above Suspicion" has to do with Dempsey's fellow police detective Alan Rhinehart, Joe Mantegna,who realized that Dempsey was guilty,trying to convince his superior Capt Lindsey, Ron Canada, and the internal affairs department to have him arrested and tried for his bother and wife's deaths.The movie ends on a very disturbing note with Det. Rhinehart finally getting Dempsey to stand trial for his brothers and wife's murder but the results shocked even him in how brilliant and, for the loss of a better word, evil Dempsey's plan was. No matter what Rhienhart could come up with he found out, the hard way, that he was totally helpless to have a jury convict Dempsey.

A while ago I read in places that Above Suspicion was a sleeper hit in it's time and was a great film with twists and turns. It appeared on television the other night so I decided to give it a go and see what I made of it and after it finished I was in complete shock to actually have found a fantastic B movie thriller. I only know Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent so it was nice to see him in something else apart from that. At one point all the main characters in this I loved in one film or other. Of course reeve's in Superman, Kim Cattrall in Big Trouble in Little China and Joe Mantega in The Godfather Part 3 so to have them all together in one film was great and it worked on so many levels. It all begins with Reeve as a cop who goes out on a drug bust or something along those lines and he get's shot during it. He ends up paralysed from the waist down, becomes very depressed and decides that suicide is the only way out to cure his long and tiring depression, in steps his brother and wife played by Cattrall. He knows that killing himself will leave no insurance on his life to leave to his young son so he pleads with his wife and brother to shoot him in a staged robbery. I will not say no more as it will spoil the fun, but from there on in you are taken straight into a tale of deceit and murder. I still am very shocked to have seen how good it was considering it wasn't backed up by a big film studio so this is what we have to remember from now on. We may have to put up with some terrible B movies that are straight to video but there are some if not a lot of surprisingly good films out there with powerful stories. Keep an eye out and watch if you get the chance as you will not be disappointed, I promise you.

Dempsey Cain (Christopher Reeve) is a perfectionist and accurate detective, married with Gail (Kim Cattrall), having a son and living in a comfortable house. His brother Nick (Edward Kerr) is a reckless policeman and is having an affair with Gail. Dempsey's colleague Rhinehart (Joe Mantegna) disputes with him who is the best detective in their district. One day, in a bust in a hotel, trying to arrest five Mexicans who killed two policemen, Dempsey is shot and become paralyzed below his waist. Dempsey becomes very depressed and tries unsuccessfully to suicide. Then, he proposes his brother and his wife to kill him, simulating a robbery in his house, in order to get his life insurance paid and for them to raise his son. What happens next makes this movie an excellent film noir. I would never expect such a good unknown film. The story and the screenplay are great, having many plot points, and the performance of the cast is perfect. The irony is that Christopher Reeves became paralyzed after this movie in an accident. Recommended for those who likes amoral movies. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Sem Suspeita" ("Without Suspicion")