Such a frustrating disappointment

Absolutely brilliant

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

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.

Christopher Reeve was a very good actor - a talented man. Pity his career suffered because of the Superman role that made him. In this telemovie he plays a (super)cop shafted by his brother and his wife. It is a complex plot with many a twist - a great script with a number of the supporting cast playing against type. Reeve's character is always one step ahead of the game. The plot is vaguely similar in premise to "Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion" starring Gian Maria Volante. Kim Cattrell is not sexy to my eyes but she shows good acting chops and isn't afraid to get down on screen. Joe Montagne is generally underrated and this movie shows the range of his talents well. In the end, Reeve is the star and shows extreme skill in the way he develops Cain (it's all in the eyes!). Great ending, with a slightly comic judge's role, which makes the climax even more impact full.

Interesting script, filled with suspense, perhaps because of the nature of the film and Christopher Reeve's part, the film is more poignant now then ever. Acting all around is good, direction excellent, a film not to be missed.