Suture

1993

1h 36m

Mystery & Thriller

List

71%

17 Reviews

Tomatometer

70%

1,000+ Ratings

Audience Score

Vincent Towers (Michael Harris) and Clay Arlington (Dennis Haysbert), identical looking half-brothers, do not meet until their father's funeral. Vincent convinces Clay to switch lives with him, and Clay accepts. Clay, however, doesn't know that Vincent killed their father and, in an effort to fake his own death and get away with the crime, plans to murder Clay as well. Clay lives through the first attempt on his life. But, left amnesic and confused, how long can he survive?

Read More

Read Less

Prime Video

Rent Suture on Prime Video, or buy it on Prime Video.

Audience Member

I watched this nearly 16 years ago. My head still hurts. Recommend.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

01/14/23

Full Review

Audience Member

An odd, unique and stylized experimental film that seems to have been forgotten.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

02/22/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Stylish film that never manages to go anywhere very interesting with all of its visual ideas.. This black and white puzzler tries to be clever about a host of issues (personal identity, memory, racial bias) with only limited success.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

01/25/23

Full Review

Audience Member

A bit of serious work. Still trying to work out the black and white issue.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/17/23

Full Review

Frances H

Although visually interesting in the filming style of an old Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode, the plot and length should have followed that series' conventions. The movie dragged on and on to feature film length and the twist of nobody recognizing that the two men were very different, not only of two different races, but very different size and body types was belabored to the point of ridiculousness. The screenwriter and director just brat this point to death in the dialogue--the idea of these very opposite men being so similar that nobody knows the truth of the switch of Clay for Vincent. The ink blots with identically opposite sides, Vincent's birthday making his zodiac sign a Gemini, Clay only wearing all white clothes just like Vincent's after he takes Vincent's place, Mrs. Lucerne saying that even though her birds look Identical, she could still always tell them apart, the fact that one of the birds is dead, all of the stark white in Vincent's houses just too much. The issue is bludgeoned into us. And then we never do find out what Alice Jameson's relationship is to Vincent and his father.The one unusual point is hammered into us ad nauseum, while the end is no surprise. The visual style and one discrepancy from reality is just not enough to sustain a feature length film.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

09/06/13

Full Review

Audience Member

Ridiculous to say the least. If the Director is going make us do the "pretending" that this world is color blind then perhaps we should also pretend that color doesn't exists at all. The voice is completely different as well. Let's look at the hair as well. Come on. Only his hair dresser knows. The Psychiatrists is Asian are we to pretend he is German. "I think you amnesia is founded on the bases that you want to have sex with your mother." Give me a break.

Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars

01/30/23

Full Review

Read all reviews

Post a rating

Scott McGehee

Director

Dennis Haysbert

Clay Arlington

Michael Harris

Vincent Towers

Sab Shimono

Dr. Max Shinoda

Mel Harris

Dr. Renee Descartes

Dina Merrill

Alice Jameson

Show Less Cast & Crew

Show More Cast & Crew

29%

31%

Consenting Adults

25%

54%

The Good Son

TRAILER

for The Good Son

39%

39%

Jennifer Eight

57%

38%

Dream Lover

26%

38%

Silent Fall

Discover more movies and TV shows.

View More

View more photos

Michael Sragow

New Yorker

It pivots on questions of what constitutes identity-the internal stuff of life or the external components of race, wealth, and status.

May 8, 2017

Full Review

Anton Bitel

Little White Lies

a bold, confident debut that knows exactly what it is, and has a lot of fun letting its viewers reconstruct and reconcile its separated pieces. For here everything - and nothing - is black and white.

Jul 5, 2016

Full Review

Roger Ebert

Chicago Sun-Times

It's the kind of movie that holds your attention and is splendid to look at, but after it's over you feel empty, because there wasn't much there, really, except for the visual ideas.

Rated: 2.5/4

Jan 1, 2000

Full Review

Richard Propes

TheIndependentCritic.com

A quality film that never quite found the audience it deserved.

Rated: 2.5/4.0

Sep 24, 2020

Full Review

Charles Mudede

The Stranger (Seattle, WA)

This is neo-noir at its strangest and boldest.

Aug 22, 2018

Full Review

Malcolm Johnson

Hartford Courant

McGehee and Siegel unfold this deep psychological tale with blurry flashes and flashbacks from Clay's fragmented mind. The scenes in the present have an unfocussed look, too. It is all rather like a B-picture from the '50s.

May 15, 2018

Full Review

Read all reviews

Synopsis

Vincent Towers (Michael Harris) and Clay Arlington (Dennis Haysbert), identical looking half-brothers, do not meet until their father's funeral. Vincent convinces Clay to switch lives with him, and Clay accepts. Clay, however, doesn't know that Vincent killed their father and, in an effort to fake his own death and get away with the crime, plans to murder Clay as well. Clay lives through the first attempt on his life. But, left amnesic and confused, how long can he survive?

Director: Scott McGehee
Production Co: Kino Korsakoff
Genre: Mystery & Thriller
Original Language: English
Release Date (Streaming): Jan 9, 2017
Box Office (Gross USA): $98.3K
Runtime: 1h 36m
Sound Mix: Surround, Stereo

Most Popular at Home Now