Metacritic reviews

The movie is full of holes, but there's never time to worry about them, and everyone's having too good a time ducking in and out of the subplots anyway. [23 Oct 1987, p.D5]

If plausibility isn't at the very top of your list of requirements in a courtroom thriller, and if dashingly assured performances are, you can have a cheerfully good time at Suspect. [22 Oct 1987, p.1]

Suspect is a well-made thriller, but it was spoiled for me by an extraordinary closing scene where Cher, as the defense attorney, solves the case with all of the logic of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

If Suspect amounts to less than the sum of its parts, those parts are often valuable on their own.

Suspect remains a routine Jagged Edge follow-up.

Despite some plausibility problems, the movie is well handled by director Peter Yates. There is no question that Suspect is capable of putting a lump in one's throat; the problem is that it's a little hard to swallow.

Suspect smothers in misapplied seriousness-it's the thriller as civics lesson. [23 Oct 1987, p.A]

For the most part, this case, which includes a convenient last-minute taped confession and a lifeless Cher-Quaid romance, should have been thrown out of court.

Suspect doesn't provide even the most basic pleasure that we've come to expect from thrillers -- it's doesn't get our pulse racing. For most of it, we're stuck in what must be the ugliest courtroom in the history of movies, and after a while, it becomes a drag on your spirits.

Art imitates art - and not very well - in Peter Yates' gimmicky suspense drama sabotaged by a flimsy script full of cliches.