In HBO’s hit series Game of Thrones, Emilia Clarke was one of the most powerful would-be rulers of Westeros. But in the new true crime thriller Above Suspicion, she’s just a desperate woman trying to escape a dead end coal-mining town in Kentucky any way she can.

Susan Smith (Clarke) thinks her big ticket out of town has arrived when FBI agent Mark Putnam (Jack Huston) uses her as an informant, even going so far as to strike up an intimate relationship with her while the case unfolds. But when the job is done, he skips town and goes back to his wife and kids, leaving Susan high and dry. And that’s just not something she’s going to tolerate. Listen to Emilia Clarke’s Southern accent and see how far she’s willing to go in the Above Suspicion trailer below.

Above Suspicion Trailer

If the premise itself didn’t already sound worthy of an episode of Jerry Springer, there’s also the added twist of Susan Smith being pregnant, which makes the FBI agent even more of a scumbag. Meanwhile, Johnny Knoxville is also kicking around as a seemingly scorned former lover who doesn’t want anything to do with Susan now that she’s been kicked to the curb. It all feels like a gritty Lifetime movie, and not even the fact that it’s based on a true story is doing the material any favors.

The only hope that this movie might turn out better than it seems is that it’s directed by Phillip Noyce, who previously directed The Bone Collector, Patriot Games, and Clear and Present Danger. At the same time, the last major movie he helmed was the underwhelming adaptation of The Giver, so he seems to have lost his touch in recent years.

The rest of the cast includes Sophie Lowe, Austin Hébert, Karl Glusman, Chris Mulkey, Omar Miller, Kevin Dunn and Thora Birch. But it’s probably not going to be the kind of movie they’re happy to see in parentheses next to their name.

Based on the true story of one of the most notorious crimes in FBI history, this gritty crime-thriller stars Emilia Clarke (“Game of Thrones”) as Susan Smith, a young woman desperate to escape a seedy life of crime and drugs in a Kentucky coal mining town. When a newly minted FBI agent named Mark Putnam (Jack Huston, “Fargo”) recruits Susan as his informant for a high-profile case, she believes her bad luck may finally be changing. But as Susan and Putnam’s relationship deepens, so does the danger, setting them both on a collision course with deadly consequences.

Above Suspicion arrives in select theaters and on VOD starting on May 14, 2021.

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