SUTURE
A film review by James Berardinelli
Copyright 1994 James Berardinelli
Rating (0 to 10): 3.1
Date Released: varies Running Length: 1:35 Rated: No MPAA Rating (Violence, language, sexual situations)
Starring: Dennis Haysbert, Michael Harris, Mel Harris, Sab Shimono, Dina Merrill Directors: Scott McGehee and David Siegel Producers: Scott McGehee and David Siegel Screenplay: Scott McGehee and David Siegel Music: Carry Berger Released by Samuel Goldwyn Co.
The themes of identity and individuality, as brought to the fore by amnesia, have been a staple of thrillers since the inception of the genre. The success of an effort dependent upon this worn-out tactic usually is a function of the talent of the director and the intelligence of the screenplay. DEAD AGAIN, brilliantly realized by Kenneth Branagh, is an example of one such movie that works. Conversely, SUTURE, the product of Scott McGehee and David Siegel, is an unmitigated disaster.
Clay Arlington (Dennis Haysbert) and Vincent Towers (Michael Harris) are half-brothers who bear a striking resemblance to each other. Everyone in the movie comments on this, including the two principals. It's like looking in the mirror, they say. There's a problem, though, and it comes as a result of the audience's perception of all this, for while actor Haysbert is a big, bulky African American, Harris is tall, thin, and white. Only Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger could be less alike.
The producers/directors/writers are obviously having a great deal of fun with this, but it undermines their movie. By nature, thrillers demand suspension of disbelief, and this gimmicky device on the part of McGehee and Siegel destroys any hope of drawing an audience into the black-and- white world of their film. The audience becomes alienated and annoyed, and desperately wants someone to say "Hey! They're nothing alike!" Obviously, it never happens. Some will probably find this conceit to be clever and artsy, but in my opinion, it's just plain stupid.
The plot itself is relatively sparse and unoriginal. Vincent is guilty of murder, and decides to fake his own death, using Clay's look-alike body as the victim of an automobile explosion. Things go awry, however, and Clay survives--a bloody mass of burns and broken bones with amnesia. As a beautiful plastic surgeon (Mel Harris) puts his body back together, a psychologist (Sab Shimono) attempts to do the same thing with his memories. But Vincent is still out there, somewhere, with a few loose ends to tie up.
Excepting the first and last fifteen minutes, this is a dull motion picture. It's admittedly stylish--the black-and-white photography has something to do with that--but the substance has been stretched and padded to reach feature length. There's a lot of fancy psychological talk about what it means to be true to one's identity, but it all amounts to very little. In the end, no one's likely to remember any of it. I certainly don't.
The acting isn't all that remarkable. Only Michael Harris as the creepy, detached Vincent, gives a reasonable performance, and his won't be remembered among the great villains of the genre. Dennis Haysbert, Mel Harris, and Sab Shimono are on hand to pick up paychecks. None of the characters are of much interest to the audience, nor apparently to the men and women playing them.
In its conception, SUTURE was probably designed more as an homage to Hitchcock than a completely original piece. What creators McGehee and Siegel have forgotten is that to honor a great filmmaker, it's necessary to come up with something worth watching. After SUTURE, they should keep looking, because they haven't found it yet. Maybe next time they'll try something with sisters ... played by Nell Carter and Holly Hunter, no doubt.
- James Berardinelli (blake7@cc.bellcore.com)
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews