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HugeReviews.com
Reviews:
Don’t
Say a Frantic/Witness/Patriot Games, er, Word
by Michael Flanagan
Solid
What propels Don’t Say a
Word is its psychological thrills, the deep
emotion and excitement that comes from a powerfully
intense setup.
What lands Don’t Say a Word is its
second half, the at times ridiculous plot-twists
that take the film from an inner-psychological level
to an action movie with more guns and blood than
chills and smarts.
The opening is greatly
powerful. A bank robbery explodes in betrayal between criminals.
Flash forward ten years.
A strange girl turns up in a psychiatric
hospital, only giving the cryptic words, “you want
what they want.”
Another girl floating dead in the river
initially goes unmentioned until a female detective
begins her trail of the killer.
When Dr. Nathan Conrad’s (Michael Douglas)
daughter is mysteriously kidnapped, he is told she
will die unless the “what they want” girl tells
him a six digit number.
The kidnappers/bank robbers then reveal that
they can see and follow Conrad everywhere he goes.
The revelation of the levels of their
observations is yet another powerful element of this
crime thriller.
Conrad then begins his time-monitored
inquisition of the girl who knows the mystery
numbers and hides them in her mind, even from
herself. This
setup, written out as it is, presents quite an
elaborate, intelligent film.
Unfortunately, the rest of the
movie happens.
I won’t give any more away here, mainly
because it’s not a bad movie.
But the second half can’t live up to the
elaborate setup. Intelligence becomes physicality, mystery becomes night
filming, and the emotional thrills become clichéd
lines of dialogue that we’ve all heard before in
several better
Harrison Ford films.
Again, this isn’t a negative thing all in
itself, but when it’s the second half, climax, and
conclusion of such an intense beginning, one can’t
help but feel a little disappointment.
But a little disappointment
does not a bad movie make.
And as an added bonus, Don’t
Say a Word, released in the CGI-doctored time of
World Trade Center-removal, prominently features the
powerful Twin Towers in several horizon shots, and
as much as the studios refuse to admit, there’s a
strange comfort in seeing them there.
Especially in this time of cinematic
Orwellian doctoring of fact.
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