When a Supreme Court Justice commits suicide and the body of a file clerk at the Justice Department is found floating in the Potomac River, nobody considers it a conspiracy. Instead, homeless and deaf vet Carl Wayne Anderson (Liam Neeson) is arrested because he had been sleeping in the clerk’s car. He doesn’t have a chance against the system unless public defender Kathleen Riley (Cher) can discover who was really behind the murder. She also has some help from Eddie Sanger (Dennis Quaid),  a juror on the case, because that’s the way that trials work in the real world.

Judge Matthew Bishop Helms (John Mahoney) thinks that there’s something happening between Kathleen and Eddie, but he may have some bigger problems because he could end up being in the very trial he’s presiding over.

It’s pretty incredible how much research Cher, Neeson and Quaid did for their roles, spending months around people who would inspire them as well as educate them as to how the real world version of their character would act.

Directed by Peter Yates (Bullitt, The Deep, Krull) and written by Eric Roth (The Concorde … Airport ’79, Wolfen, Ali, Dune), Suspect is a very 80s mystery which fits in quite well with the Mill Creek box set I discovered it inside.

The Mill Creek Through the Decades: 1980s Collection has a ton of great movies at an affordable price. It also has Punchline, Who’s Harry Crumb?, Vice Versa, The New Kids, Roxanne, Blue Thunder, Little Nikita, Band of the Hand and Like Father, LikeSon. You can get this set from Deep Discount.