Excellent but underrated film

Admirable film.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The debut feature of US filmmaker-duo Scott McGehee and David Siegel is a pristine-looking psychological forensics of an individual's confused identity, shot in widescreen black-and-white cinematography, SUTURE has its unmissable neo-noir panache awash but also undeniably undercut by its slight story-telling stratagem. McGehee-Siegel's conceit is surprising and madcap, the purportedly identical half-brothers Vincent Towers (a dour-looking Harris) and Clay Arling (Haysbert) are diametrically different in their appearances (the racial distinction strikes as a self-aware but caustic jape), which at once impels viewers to suspend our disbelief and blatantly dissociates its scenario from any pretension of realism, as if to declare in its opening: don't trust what you've seen. Truly, what we see is a rather simple identity-swapping scheme goes amiss, after murdering his minted father, Vincent plots to liquidate Clay, his doppelganger half-brother, whose existence is conveniently sealed from the outside, thus Clay would be the whipping boy passing off as Vincent, guilty and perished, then the real Vincent can return as Clay to claim his munificent inheritance. The plan is seamless a priori, but miraculously Clay survives the car comb and ends up with a disfigured visage and severe amnesia. Treated by Dr. Renee Descartes (Harris) to reconstruct his face, now believing he is Vincent, Clay's memory has to take a longer divagation to recover his true identity under the psychoanalysis of Dr. Max Shinoda (Shimono), who is welded together with the image of Rorschach test and passes wisdom in shrink's parlance by rote, and it goes without saying, the real Vincent will not have Clay usurping his heirdom for too long, danger and myth (for instance, what is the ulterior motive of Vincent's recently widowed mother Alice Jameson, played by an elegantly dressed, seemingly benignant Dina Merrill?) are hovering like dark cumuli, and the film's ending sternly keeps the lid on its barbed irony of Clay's ultimate choice. In lieu of salting the plot, McGehee-Siegel duo resolves to making the mark of their cinematic style with their puny budget ($900,000). Potentially intensified by the sagacious choice of monochrome, the film emanates a beguiling retro-experimental flair with its punctiliously arranged compositions, high contrasted lighting and shades (inside the post-modern edifice equipped with bed-sheet- covered furniture and unadorned walls functioning as Vincent's clinical abode) and jumpy montages. Another boon to this glossy debut is Dennis Haysbert, a straight-up leading man material endowed with virility, sensibility and fine fettle, who totally has it in him to rival Denzel Washington's prominent status in Hollywood only if we were living in a world of justice, and SUTURE, at any rate, is the bona-fides of the overlooked standing of McGehee-Siegel's oeuvre.

There is a lot more in this movie than it seems. The actual philosophical dilemma between 'having' and 'being' is developed wonderfully here. One character wants to change his 'being' (Vincent), and Clay wants to change his 'having' (Clay). the intrigue brings them both into reconsidering their whole understanding of life. The name of the Doctor (Renee Descartes) is self explanatory... The desires of both characters are evolving and their need for something else arises slowly. watch it ones, twice and this amazing life lessons will arise by itself. I am teaching philosophy and i used this movie as a tool to make my students search all existing personality challenges in this film. 20 years later, we still speak about it. Enjoy...

Since some of the reviews compared "Suture" to a Hitchcock, we watched it waiting for a rationale for why nobody seemed to grasp the lack of resemblance between the presumably half-brothers (one has distinct Afro-American features, the other does not). Could everyone here who pretended not to notice be in a conspiracy to cash in on the white brother's fortune? Didn't seem likely, since nobody was shown even suspecting, but we endured this bore to the bitter end just to find out. No MacGuffin. No relationship to Hitchcock. A complete waste of time, not only for the viewers, but for those involved in making the film.

Very excellent film. The choice of black and white to shoot the film was a very good idea. So was the casting of the 2 brothers. I believe they are chosen to look completely different (although in the narrative they are supposed to look identical) is that the director/writer wanted to show how different their personalities are. Perhaps this could not have been conveyed so easily if 2 actual twins were cast. The dreams with the metaphorical flashback triggers were very clver, i.e. needles in the arm/Needles the town. They don't make films this thrilling anymore unfortunately. Hitchcock couldn't have done this any better.Anyway, this was an excellent film, check it out.