Given the climactic events of Game of Thrones, you could be forgiven for not being keen to experience more of Emilia Clarke on your screen, but she’ll next be seen in crime thriller Above Suspicion, a new trailer for which has now been released.
The plot sees Susan Smith (Clarke), an impoverished young woman from a small Kentucky mining town, pulled into an FBI investigation looking to snare a ruthless bank robber, whereupon she and Mark Putnam (Jack Huston), the rookie agent working his first major case, begin an illicit affair despite the latter’s wife and baby accompanying him.
The trailer presents the film as a Fatal Attraction-style tale of a woman scorned, with Susan’s unhinged obsession continuing to escalate the more she’s denied, so hopefully its events will portray the situation as more nuanced, seeing as Mark is the one who’s actually cheating on the person he purports to love by taking advantage of a vulnerable woman and promising to take care of her, then discarding her the moment her usefulness to him expires.
The movie is based on a true story told in a non-fiction book of the same name by journalist Joe Sharkey, the events of which are rather notorious if you’re familiar with them but would be spoilerific if you’re not, so don’t read too much about it if you want to go into the pic cold.
As well as Clarke and Huston, the film also stars the likes of Johnny Knoxville as Susan’s ex-husband Cash, Thora Birch (who director Philip Noyce worked with as a child in ‘90s thrillers Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games) as her sister Jolene, and Sophie Lowe as Mark’s wife Kathy.
It’s not controversial to suggest that contemporary audiences have more of an appetite for stories demonstrating the unreliability of law enforcement than they might have previously, so when Above Suspicion is released on May 14th, it might just prove to be a surprise success.
