MOVIE REVIEW
“ABOVE SUSPICION”
Rated R. On VOD.
Grade: B+
Based on a true story unfolding in 1988 in the Appalachian mountain town of Pikefield, Ky., “Above Suspicion” begins with a narrator who is already dead. The film, which was directed by the great Phillip Noyce (“Patriot Games,” “Clear and Present Danger”), is the story of a man and a woman who might have led happy lives if only they had not met.
He is newly minted and married FBI agent Mark Putnam (Jack Huston), who moves to Pikeville, one of the battlefields of the Hatfield-McCoy feud, to help investigate a string of bank robberies being carried out by a masked thief armed with a sawed-off shotgun. She is drug addict and single mother Susan Smith (Emilia Clarke, armed with a musical Kentucky accent). Susan lives under the same roof in a shotgun shack as her ex-husband Cash (an almost demonic Johnny Knoxville), the local drug dealer, with her two young children. She and Cash are “not together.” The shack is the setting of a nightly drug party. As it happens, Cash also rents a room to the bank robber Randy McCoy (yes, those McCoys) and his young girlfriend and getaway driver Georgia (Brittany O’Grady). Do I need to tell you that Susan has an older sister, who owns a hairdressing salon and that her name is Jolene (Thora Birch)? Cue Dolly Parton.
Mark and Susan meet and the sparks fly. He offers Cash money for information to help to solve crimes in the area, and it turns out that Cash knows a thing or two or three. Susan also knows something about local crime. Heck, she’s collecting welfare checks from Kentucky and West Virginia, and she wants a piece of that “federal money” that handsome Mark is spreading around. For her, witness protection sounds like a veritable vacation. She refers to Pikeville as “the town that doesn’t let go.”
What’s going to happen to the ambitious FBI agent and the hillbilly temptress? Although the screenplay was adapted by Chris Gerolmo (“Mississippi Burning”) from a non-fiction book by Joe Sharkey, “Above Suspicion” might be described as a little bit “Postman Always Rings Twice” and a little bit “Kiss Me Deadly.” Susan might have been a real person. But Clarke turns her into a memorable and, in spite of her sins, even likable, femme fatale. While Huston is quite good, he is not up to Clarke’s speed, and their chemistry isn’t quite hot enough. “Above Suspicion,” which was completed in 2019, might have been a new film noir classic. In the supporting cast, Sophie Lowe delivers a chameleon-esque turn as Mark’s not-so-innocent wife. Kevin Dunn and Omar Benson Miller do a lot with a little, and Brian Lee Franklin is seriously menacing as a local drug lord. But Clarke’s Appalachian junkie enchantress steals more than just scenes. She steals the movie.
(“Above Suspicion” contains sexually suggestive scenes, drug use, violence and profanity.)