Don't Say A Word review

Michael Douglas is at it again. Just when we thought he had hit a streak and was choosing all the right projects (The Wonder Boys, One Night at McCool's, Traffic), here he is back to starring in a pedestrian b-movie thriller that is more reminiscent of A Perfect Murder than any of the more provocative or cerebral films he has recently appeared in. You know you are on dodgy ground when Douglas appears with a woman young enough to be his daughter in the role of his wife: admittedly a young-looking 57, his onscreen partners in some of his more dubious films have included Demi Moore (39) in Disclosure, Deborah Unger (35) in The Game and Gwyneth Paltrow (29) in A Perfect Murder. In Don't Say A Word it's the turn of Famke Janssen (again 35) as the younger woman in Douglas' life, and although she spends most of the movie in bed, luckily for her she is usually on her own.

The trouble with Don't Say A Word is that a promising plot and a snappy opening soon take a u-turn into predictability and mediocrity. Douglas stars as Nathan Conrad, a psychiatrist on his way home for Thanksgiving to his loving wife (Janssen) and daughter (Skye McCole Batusiak). We know that Douglas really loves his family and is a good and decent man because he tucks his daughter in with stories, gives his broken-legged wife a bedbath and gets up early to make them all pancakes for Thanksgiving. Unfortunately he also wakes up to discover that while he has been cleansing Mrs. Conrad, somebody has crept in during the night and kidnapped his daughter. So far, not so bad. Douglas is immediately contacted by the nasty British kidnapper Patrick (Sean Bean) and told that he will have to put all of his psychiatric powers to good use in order to get his daughter back. Patrick's problem is that a mental patient at one of Conrad's hospitals has a secret number trapped in her memory, a number which will lead Patrick to a jewel he has been searching for for ten years. He gives Douglas just over seven hours to get the number.

After this brisk and enjoyable start the tension soon slackens and the plot starts to unravel. Conrad's sessions with the patient (a good performance by Brittany Murphy) are hardly impressive and he doesn't really do anything that any untrained person might attempt. There is a bit of chicanery in the hospital between Conrad and his colleague Dr. Sachs (Oliver Platt), a cop turns up to interfere (Jennifer Esposito), while all the time Mrs. Conrad lies bed bound at home fearful for her daughter's life.

The whole time pressure on Conrad is soon downgraded to 'unexciting' and when he takes the patient out into the city in order to prompt her to remember it all becomes a bit confusing. There are several plot strands which I won't reveal which don't quite add up (or are ignored by the filmmakers), but the cardinal sin of this overlong film is that the end is signalled a good forty minutes before it arrives. And when it does arrive it is exactly as everyone predicted. Given the talent involved and the aspiring premise, it's all very disappointing.