When Larry King calls Don't Say a Word "the
thriller to end all
thrillers" is he saying it's good or that it is the
final nail in the
coffin of a tired genre? I'm all for nail-biting
suspense but so many
filmmakers have worshiped at the alter of Hitchcock
that it's starting
to lose its meaning. Gary Fleder's Don't Say a
Word is a jumbled
mish-mash of quick-cut action scenes, pop-psych
motivations, and too
many hastily-drawn characters.
When Fleder claims to be a Hitchcock afficionado he
seems to be
mistaking fanboyship with actual influence. (Plus,
he's also ignoring the fact that Spellbound,
Hitchcock's foray into the psychology thriller, is one
of the master's least interesting films.) His chops
seem to come more
from the David Fincher school of TV
commercial
filmmaking. Like Antoine Fuqua and Simon West, Fleder
has adopted Fincher's
cool tinted music video style without a sense of that
director's
developing kinkiness and thematic experimentation.
The plot of Don't
Say a Word (based on a novel of the same name) is
a few notches
below Fleder's sense of self-importance. In fact, it's
typical Lifetime
melodrama (regular readers know that I'm no Lifetime
hater): Nathan Conrad (Michael Douglas), playing
another rich super husband/dad, has
to administer his brain shrinkage to Elisabeth Burrows
(Brittany Murphy), a
violently troubled teen before some thugs (lead by
Sean Bean) kill his daughter. The thugs
want a number that only Elisabeth knows. (the fallacy
of the title,
which
suggests some sort of child abuse secret, is that the
information not
being told is self-created, rather than being forced on the girl. In other words, no one is actually demanding that she not say a word.)
In his race against
the clock, Dr. Conrad
has to keep the whole situation a secret from the
cops. The film boasts
a number of half-baked subplots (a thread about a
plucky detective
(Jennifer Esposito) really could have been left on the
cutting room
floor) that end up detracting from the pacing and
suspense. A number of
scenes that are supposed to play as tense montages end
up cluttered
with
shots of uninteresting side-stories. Famke Janssen
plays Douglas'
daughter... I mean wife, in a role that requires her
to mostly lie in
bed with a big fat cast on her leg looking concerned.
This sort of
pandering makes the film look manipulative in an
obvious way. The
entire premise strains to build tension: Child
endangerment is a
short
cut to most people's heartstrings. But taking shortcuts doesn't guarantee results.
Still, it seems
that the film takes
shortcuts along the way. Douglas launches into
rescue-dad mode so
quickly that his emotional turmoil is downplayed. Dr.
Conrad's
colleague
(the sturdy Oliver Platt) has his own drama, although
it is left a
little murky and is given no resolution. The ending of
the film is so
typically Hollywood that, even if you had been drawn
in by the premise,
you would feel cheated. For a film that supposedly
approaches the
thriller genre from a psychological perspective the
ending is sadly
simple minded.
VIDEO:
The anamorphic video is near perfect. The print is
clean, the image is
sharp, the complex color pallette is reproduced
faithfully. This is the
sort of transfer that should be expected from new
releases and, even
though the movie is lacking in some thematic concerns,
it was obviously
crewed by pros.
AUDIO:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 track is dynamic and has good,
strong bass. It's a very nicely produced track. The
DTS track, on the other hand, seemed less exciting to
my ear, which is strange since I usually detect a
slight bit of extra oomph in DTS. Still, either track
is fine. The disc loses a point, however, for
disabling on-the-fly audio track switching.
A Spanish 2.0 track is also available, as are English
subtitles.
A quick note about Mark Isham's score: It's one of the
laziest pieces of composition to appear in a film for
some time. From the drum beats during the "action"
scenes to the guitar squeals and somber mood music,
Isham's work is not up to the level of competency of
the other technicians involved. And to think, a score
album is available.
EXTRAS:
An extraordinary selection of extras has been included
with this very
ordinary film. Director Gary Fleder's commentary is
the typical film
school grad self-congratulation, although his
discussion of the post-
9/11 mood and its effect on the release of the film is
something new.
The film was released in late September and must have
been more or less
out of theaters by October 12th, when the commentary
was recorded,
giving lie to Fleder's comments about its having been a big
hit.
The
packaging also lists "scene specific commentaries by
Michael Douglas,
Sean Bean, Brittany Murphy, Famke Janssen, and Oliver
Platt", but the
copy writer must not have understood what that means.
In this case
"scene specific" means that each actor's commentary
only accompanies a
specific scene. So, each track is accessible with its
own little
snippet
of the movie. Not necessarily a bad feature but a far
cry from the
raucous group commentary suggested by the copy.
Many of the behind the scenes extras are lumped
together in a section
called "Cinema Master's Class," which I guess is to
feed into the whole
"Buying a DVD is the same thing as going to film
school!" lie that
magazines like Entertainment Weekly always spread. The
material here is
not bad but to call it educational is a stretch. A
selection of dailies
(unedited footage of the previous day's work) shows a
scene from every
angle in unedited chunks which can be compared to the
final edit of
that
scene (ambitious viewer might want to digitize the
dailies and cut their
own version of the scene).
An interview with
producers Arnold
Kopelson and his bizarre transvestite-like wife Anne
illustrate why
producers are known to be pompous and insufferable,
while additional
interviews with Fleder really start to cause
Fleder-fatigue.
A
"making of" segment is pure EPK hocum while some more
in depth segments
on the film's production design, score, special
effects, and
storyboards
are of a little more interest.
Possibly the best extra is Brittany Murphy's screen
test, shot on film
with a set and makeup for the young actress. Since
this is only a
screen
test it consists of a single camera aimed at the
actress. It suggests
that the film, minus Fleder's incessant cutting and
jumpiness, might
have had a much creepier tone.
Bios and a cheesy ad for the DVD of Douglas' Wall
Street round
out the section.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
I don't want to be too hard on Don't Say a
Word. There is nothing extraordinarily bad about
it. The story and characters are run of the mill for
today's derivative thrillers and the pacing is off.
The thing that hurts the film is that the lavish
treatment on this DVD backfires. Had the film been
released in a simple edition it wouldn't have drawn
attention to itself. By allowing the film's creators
to wax on about how great the movie is and how
wonderful all of the components are they only help
point out how ordinary it really is.
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