Don’t Say a Word *** (2001, Michael Douglas, Brittany Murphy) – Classic Movie Review 912

Michael Douglas lifts director Gary Fleder’s solid, old-style, if frankly contrived 2001 Hollywood thriller as Dr Nathan Conrad, a psychiatrist whose eight-year-old daughter Jessie (Skye McCole Bartusiak) is abducted by crazed crooks. They are desperately seeking a six-digit number piece of information about a gem known only to Douglas’s apparently catatonic patient (Brittany Murphy).

Douglas is ideal in this tense, slick thriller, bringing far more class than it deserves. Although none too credible or surprising in Anthony Peckham and Patrick Smith Kelly’s mechanical, formulaic screenplay, adapting Andrew Klavan’s novel, Don’t Say a Word is still flashily made, enjoyable and fast moving. It’s a useful time-passer.

But Sean Bean overplays his hand something rotten in a display of coarse acting as the chief villain and Famke Janssen is wasted as Douglas’s incapacitated wife who’s also in a spot of peril.

This kind of movie’s a bit of a dinosaur, but, like those in Jurassic Park, it’s still alive and kicking.

Gary Fleder’s also known for Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead (1995), Kiss the Girls (1997), Runaway Jury (2003)  and Homefront (2013).

Brittany Murphy died of cardiac arrest on December 20 2009, aged 32.

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(C) Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 912 derekwinnert.com