Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
All hail Nordling!! One of our good friends from Texas has weighed in with a peek at the new Michael Douglas film. Always good to see Nordling here on these pages or in our chat. Let's see what he's got to say...
Nordling here.
With all the unpleasantness of the past week or so, new movies haven't been too high on my agenda, so I was actually somewhat relieved to have a movie to review tonight. I had an opportunity to see a screening of DON'T SAY A WORD, the new Michael Douglas thriller.
First off, the film takes place in New York. So in many of the skyline scenes I found myself playing the morbid game of "Spot the WTC", and in two sequences it was visible, but only if you were looking. I haven't heard anything about this film being re-edited, but the WTC doesn't play any role in the film. I wanted to get that out of the way so those sensitive to it would be aware. Just a little warning.
The film opens with Sean Bean, who, when not selling Infiniti cars or hacking Orcs with Gandalf and company, is a head of a crew of bank thieves. In 1991 he and his crew successfully steal a rare red diamond, worth more than $10 million, but he loses it when a teammate doublecrosses him.
Fast forward ten years later, and Dr. Nathan Conrad (Michael Douglas) is a successful child psychologist, in New York, with a beautiful, albeit bedridden wife Aggie (the lovely Famke Janssen) and daughter. He is assigned a patient by Dr. Sachs (Oliver Platt) in the local asylum who appears to have been violently attacked and seems to be catatonic. HEr name is Elizabeth Burrows (Brittany Murphy) and says that Nathan "wants what they want." When Nathan presses her, she says "I'll never tell...any of you."
The next morning, Nathan and Aggie wake up to discover their daughter kidnapped, and a phone call from Sean Bean telling him that unless he can get a six digit number from Elizabeth's head, he's going to kill Nathan's daughter. So Nathan makes his way to the hospital to solve the mystery and try to get his daughter back.
Most of this is a paint-by-numbers thriller as directed by Gary Fleder (KISS THE GIRLS). There are moments of suspense, but the camerawork is so awkward that it's difficult to tell at times what's going on, and the quick edits diffuse the tension. The soundtrack also lacks any subtlety, and is overwhelming. Granted, any movie with Famke almost entirely in bed can't be all bad. There are various plotholes in the film (How does Sean Bean even know about the six digit number in the first place?) and Oliver Platt, always an entertaining diversion, disappears with little explanation in the middle of the film. The film is acted well, with Douglas turning in his usual good performance, and Brittany Murphy going through most of the facial tics taught in Quirky Acting 101. There is a sequence in the middle of the film, edited through three separate stories, that is actually pretty intense. But most of it is fairly predictable.
Would I recommend DON'T SAY A WORD? Sure, to those who are casual fans of film or Michael Douglas. It's a decent date or married couple movie to see on a Saturday night. But for us film freaks here, it doesn't slice well at all. Still, this would have been on of the best suspense films of the summer if it had been released then.
A minor issue of note, to those interested...personally, although it has nothing to do with the terrorist attacks of last week, I would have pushed this until Spring. It takes place in New York, it has a couple of shots of the WTC, and there is a car bomb sequence that will make the sensitive uncomfortable. However, it's not a bad film. Not a great film. Just...okay.
Nordling, out.
Famke plays his "beautiful, bedridden wife"? What... is she rehearsing for when she marries me? Grrrrrrr... Dutch Treat. And a Brittany Murphy white-trash surprise on the side? I can guess why Douglas signed up for this set...
"Moriarty" out.
