I Wish Cher Was My Lawyer
Suspect (1987) and the Summer of Cher!
Yesterday, May 20th, was Cher’s birthday. A national holiday, if you ask me! I don’t know if I’ve ever written here about my deep and abiding love for Cher, but it goes all the way back to childhood. The flashy outfits, the dramatic hair, the husky voice, the video for If I Could Turn Back Time…I just love her.
Here’s a photo of me receiving a Cher record in a white elephant gift exchange over ten years ago.
To celebrate our joint birthday month, last week I decided to watch Suspect. What can I say, after …And Justice For All I was on a courtroom thriller kick. But this time, instead of Al Pacino being hot, we’ve got Cher being hot. I think that Moonstruck is probably peak Cher, but this is great, too. The movie itself is bananas, and I went into it knowing nothing. I think that’s the best way to watch it, but I am going to spoil every single detail, including the mystery, so only read on if you don’t mind knowing who killed the random secretary we’re introduced to in the opening of the movie. Ready? Let’s go.
Suspect starts things out with a bang with some dramatic, film-noir-esque opening credits. Just look!
The film itself opens with a secretary, Elizabeth Quinn, receiving an envelope of money from a Supreme Court Justice. As soon as she leaves, he shoots himself. Then we jump to a scene where a bunch of older gentlemen are taking a polar plunge and they discover the body of Elizabeth Quinn. Can you imagine? You’re just trying to enjoy the benefits of a cold water plunge with your boys and you discover a dead body? I wish I knew what happened to these guys after this, but we don’t hear from them again.
Then, finally, we see Cher. She’s in bumper-to-bumper D.C. traffic and absolutely rocking a beret. A group of kids smash her windshield, open her passenger door, and run off with her purse. I think this scene is supposed to establish that a) Cher is beleaguered and b) Cher is tough (she tries to chase down the crooks). But it also establishes that the D.C. of Suspect is a nightmare. We’re, like, five minutes in and we’ve already had a suicide, a murder, and a carjacking.
Cher gets to work and is like, “ugh, I got carjacked, but that’s life!” to her platonic work husband, Morty, played by Fred Melamed, someone I’m always happy to see. Cher needs a vacation, but she’s not gonna get one, because the cops have picked up a homeless man, Carl Wayne Anderson, who they think killed Elizabeth Quinn. The homeless man had Elizabeth’s purse, a knife, and then he stabbed and bit various police officers who tried to restrain him. I’ll admit it, he’s suspicious! He’s also played by young Liam Neeson, which I genuinely did not know at first because he’s so bearded and scraggly.
The judge tells Cher she has to represent Liam Neeson, and she literally says, “But I’m due for a vacation!” Do you think the judge cares, Cher? He does not. You can take a vacation after you represent Liam Neeson and solve the murder of Elizabeth Quinn. Liam Neeson refuses to talk to anyone, but then Cher discovers this is because he’s deaf and mute, perhaps as a result of his service in the Vietnam War (I actually don’t remember if this is the case, but Cher definitely brings up his service later). Between this and …And Justice for All, I do not have a lot of faith in the fairness or thoroughness of our criminal justice system right now!
In their first meeting, Liam Neeson attacks Cher and scratches her face. He scratches Cher’s beautiful face. I don’t totally understand why him not being able to hear means he has to communicate primarily through facial scratching/stabbing. Once Cher discovers that he cannot hear her and also never learned to sign, she communicates with him via writing in nearly illegible cursive on a giant chalkboard.
It’s never explained if Liam Neeson can read lips, but I assume he can because Cher just keeps talking to him. Every time we see Liam Neeson, he gets a little more cleaned up. First his face is no longer dirty. Then he doesn’t have a beard. Then his hair is slicked back. Frankly, this hostile murder suspect is just getting hotter and hotter. At this point, I was sure he was Cher’s love interest, which is definitely unethical/probably illegal (I didn’t go to law school and only get my law knowledge from films). But these people have a connection! They understand each other like no one else can, mostly because they only communicate via cursive on a giant chalkboard! Maybe a meet cute can be a suspect attacking his court appointed lawyer.
Alas, it’s not to be. Cher’s actual love interest is still unethical, but slightly less violent. It’s Dennis Quaid, who plays a juror and looks like kind of a brat. He and Cher have less chemistry than Cher and Liam Neeson, but at least he’s never attacked her. He’s a milk lobbyist (ok) who’s trying to pass some bill for farmers (ok) and I found this whole plot line very uninteresting. The only good part was when Dennis Quaid tried to convince E. Katherine Kerr, the HBIC in every movie she’s in, to vote for his bill and then he sleeps with her to get her vote. That’s honestly so much work. Good for him.
Anyway, Dennis Quaid realizes something is off with this case, and he decides to call Cher from a payphone to anonymously give her a tip (he notices that Liam Neeson is left-handed, and Elizabeth Quinn’s fatal wound could only have come from a right-handed person). But then he won’t leave Cher alone, even though a jury member hanging out with lawyer is very against the rules. Even I know that! She keeps being like, “I can’t be accused of jury-tampering! I’m a by-the-book lawyer and I have ETHICS!” even though this feels kind of like Cher-tampering? I mean, he’s the one who won’t stop calling her.
Their biggest problem is that the judge, John Mahoney, hates Cher. Which seems unbelievable, but sure. We learn early on that he’s conservative and cranky (in his first conversation, he says that he wishes D.C. still had the death penalty). Cher keeps asking him to delay the trial to she can track down a homeless man for a witness, but he’s like, “No, I have a courtroom to run!” He’s honestly being such a jerk to Cher, even though she looks amazing in all her oversized sweaters. But he suspects something is going on between Cher and Dennis Quaid…
And it’s not like he’s wrong. They keep investigating the case together, because Cher mostly believes that her client is innocent and Dennis Quaid is trying to dissociate from his milk lobby job. He’s making being on a jury his entire personality. They have a clandestine work session at a law library, where Cher looks amazing in glasses.
They also have a conversation in the stacks, and honestly this shot should’ve won Suspect an Oscar for cinematography.
And then Judge John Mahoney shows up and they almost get caught! They don’t, but he’s suspicious and sequesters the jury. Do you think that stops Dennis Quaid? Of course not.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that before the sequestering, Dennis Quaid persuades Cher to go out alone on the dark D.C. streets, even though this film has more than established how dangerous that is, and then she gets attacked by the very witness she was hoping to find! Who later dies (not Cher’s fault). I screamed when he grabbed her and scared my son, who was trying to sleep upstairs. I had to be like, “I’m sorry, someone was hurting Cher in a movie but everything’s okay, go back to bed!”
So now Dennis Quaid is sequestered in a hotel, which honestly seems really relaxing, but you know he can’t be alone with his thoughts for even one second so he sets off the fire alarm and escapes into the night. Cher decides to go check out Elizabeth Quinn’s car (which is still in the lot where she parked it) and, even though it’s already been emptied of evidence, she finds a tape in the cassette player. The tape is a clear, articulate confession from the judge who died by suicide at the beginning of the movie, explaining that he fixed a case years ago. What are the chances, you know?
Cher talks this over with her work husband, and they conclude that there must’ve been others involved in this case fixing, and those others are behind the murder of Elizabeth Quinn. Then Cher runs out into the night to the courthouse by herself and winds up pursued by a shadowy assailant. She runs through so many tunnels and into the jail, and we only see her pursuer in shadow but…it’s very obviously the silhouette of John Mahoney. Not to brag, but I’d know John Mahoney’s silhouette anywhere. He grabs her through the bars (scary!) and Cher slices his wrist. Dennis Quaid shows up (no sequester can hold him) and saves her, although I guess she already saved herself. Somehow through all of this, neither of them got a good look at John Mahoney so neither of them know it’s him.
The next day in court, John Mahoney is trying to act like it’s a regular old day when Cher is like “I’d like to call….YOU to the stand!” Again, I don’t understand law but I can assume this isn’t a usual occurrence. Cher says that he was involved in the fixed case and he murdered Elizabeth Quinn to keep her quiet because he wanted to be appointed to the Supreme Court. Judge John Mahoney is so mad and he’s banging his gavel with wild abandon, calling for order in the court, but all that arm activity makes his wrist start bleeding all over the place and we finally know for sure that it’s him. How did Cher piece all this together? I don’t really know, but I believe she can do just about anything so I’m willing to overlook any gaps in logic. As Roger Ebert puts it in his review, “It's as if an Agatha Christie novel evaluated six suspects in a British country house, and then in the last chapter we discover the killer was a guy from next door.”
Liam Neeson is innocent! He gives Cher a hug and it’s sweet, but mostly I’m worried about him. Sure, they gave him a nice haircut, but is he still going to be homeless? Can someone help him get a job or enroll in sign language lessons or get therapy for his PTSD? The only story Suspect gives us closure on is Cher and Dennis Quaid: they end up together, hooking up in her office. Actually, he shows up to her office, where she’s sitting at her desk and looking like the baddest bitch in town, which she is, and is like, “Hmmm, I have a lot of free time now.” Maybe you should use that free time to examine your feelings about your job as a milk lobbyist, because you put yourself and Cher in extreme danger just so you wouldn’t have to focus on work. It’s a real “men will attempt to expose government corruption instead of go to therapy” situation.
Here’s Cher talking about the role and making herself seem believable as a lawyer. I did believe her!
And do you want to see Cher win the Oscar for Moonstruck? I always do. She was in Suspect, The Witches of Eastwick, and Moonstruck in the same year. We used to be a proper country.
I loved Suspect so much that I decided to watch and write about at least a couple of other Cher movies here on No One Asked. Summer hasn’t technically started, but Summer of Cher sounded so good that I had no choice but to use it. Mask is currently on hold for me at the library, and who knows what other 80s/90s Cher I’ll experience this summer? I’ll let Cher be my guide, as I should do more often. Suspect is streaming for free on Tubi.
That’s it for this week. Paid posts next week! See you soon. xo
Oh wait, one more thing. When’s the last time you watched the If I Could Turn Back Time video? Allow me to recommend it. Cher wearing that outfit, leaning against those cannons, surrounded by excited navy men…saying it’s iconic is underselling it. At one point Cher bumps the guitarist with her butt and he doesn’t even react. Is he just used to it? Another day at the office, I guess.
As usual, highlight of my day. I realize you review professionally, but how are all of these so immaculately funny? Also makes me wish I watched more movies/
I also LOVE Cher, I am here for all the Cher content!!!