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Don't Say a Word
*1/2
Cinema Releases - February 22, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. 113
minutes. Directed by Gary Fleder. Written by Patrick Smith Kelly, Anthony
Peckham; from the novel by Andrew Klavan. Starring Michael Douglas, Sean
Bean, Brittany Murphy, Skye McCole Martkusiak, Jennifer Esposito, Victor
Argo, Oliver Platt, Famke Janssen.
There is a scene in "Don't Say a
Word" in which the villain is flipping channels, comes across the
movie "Speed", and decides not to watch it, remarking, "I've seen this one
already. Too violent." The filmmakers would have done better to leave "Speed"
running for two hours -- they would have saved a lot of money and given the
audience a better time.
"Don't Say a Word" is the latest entry in the
sub-genre of movies starring Michael Douglas as a happy family man whose
life gets torn to hell by some kind of demented conspiracy. When somebody
writes the guide to these pictures, this one will be remembered as nowhere
near as good as "Fatal Attraction" or "The Game", and yes, even worse than
"Disclosure".
Douglas plays a New York City psychiatrist whose
daughter gets kidnapped by Sean Bean, a scoundrel who tells Douglas that
he has one day to get a number from the head of one of his patients. The
patient, played valiantly by Brittany Murphy, is a girl in her late teens
who slips in and out of uncommunicative madness at the whim of the plot,
and declares, "I'll never tell!" But -- gasp! -- if Douglas fails to get
the number by 5 o'clock, his daughter will be killed.
The basis for a mysterious psychological thriller
is here, and the trailer was promising. The difficulties of getting an isolated
piece of information from someone's head could have been explored, and the
movie could have generated a lot of tension by stringing out the mystery
of just what the number is. But "Don't Say a Word" is dull -- it follows
the conventions of a Deadline Movie sluggishly, cutting between cops uttering
such fine dialogue as "Jeez, detective, this is gonna be a tough one", Bean
on the phone making cryptic remarks about 'the rules of the game' and Douglas
in a collection of those scenes where therapist and patient go round in circles.
The opening scene clues us in right away to the movie's lack of imagination,
letting us know that the number is something to do with a diamond heist,
and not nuclear launch codes, or coordinates for finding the lost ark, or
anything like that.
Douglas tries to sink his face and look anxious,
but ends up just looking tired. This movie is so dank that even Oliver Platt
comes across as lifeless. Famke Janssen plays Douglas's wife, and we get
to see a lot of her legs, but that's about all the movie has to
offer.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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