Don’t
say a word
Director:
Gary Fleder
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
The Plot:
When a psychiatrist's daughter is abducted, the
kidnapper's only demand is for a scrap of knowledge that the doctor's
latest patient apparently possesses. The problem is, the patient in question
is a mentally unstable woman who is near catatonic and prone to violent
outbursts.
The
Cast:
Michael Douglas, Sean Bean, Famke Janssen, Brittany Murphy, Jennifer Esposito,
Oliver Platt
Review:
When his career stagnated in the late ‘80s
after his Oscar win for Wall Street, Michael Douglas reinvented himself
as an actor, becoming through a series of similarly themed roles the poet
of middle-aged paranoia. From Basic Instinct to Falling Down to Disclosure
to The Game, no one since Alfred Hitchcock (though Hitchcock did it from
behind the camera) has so successfully cataloged on celluloid the litany
of fears (both rational and irrational) that plague the psyche of the
middle-aged male—sex, drugs, violence, career, and politics as destructive
forces forever chipping away at the family and at the self.
Viewed in this light, it is understandable that Douglas took this role in Don’t Say a Word. It carries forward many of the actor's favorite themes—alienation, the threatened family, amoral Darwinian social competition, Freudian frustrations, and justified paranoia. That being said, this is not among Douglas's best work. His performance is once again an admirable effort, but the other performances are uneven, the direction is unspectacular, and while it starts off with originality and promise, by the halfway point of the film, the story falls back into the same old action and suspense thriller movie clichés. The result is a modestly entertaining thriller that makes for an OK Saturday night, but isn't likely to get Michael Douglas an invite to Oscar night.
--Matt
Parks
