Don’t See A Word
By Danny Sarnowski

Michael Douglas. I feel for that man. I feel for him because despite his millions and millions of dollars, despite his decades-long career, despite his Best Actor Academy Award (Wall Street) and his Best Picture Academy Award (One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest), and despite his beautiful wife and child, he must still feel that he has something to prove. Two of his last films, Wonder Boys and Traffic, were wonderful steps forward for him. In a career that is as long and as distinguished as his, it’s exciting to see someone taking big risks. It’s equally as depressing then to see such a seasoned professional going through the motions of such a ho-hum affair like Don’t Say A Word.

Word opens with what is supposed to be an exciting bank robbery. It’s a completely by-the-numbers movie heist complete with annoying, banal chattering by one of the criminals. Sean Bean, who by now has completely given up any hope of playing anyone but villains (see Patriot Games, Goldeneye, and Ronin), sneers at the camera and oozes disdain for his fellow criminals. You see, he’s so evil, he doesn’t even like other evil people! Pretty scary, eh? Not really.

After an “exciting” double-cross, the movie jumps ten years into the future where we meet Dr. Nathan Conrad (Douglas), family man psychiatrist extraordinaire. He gets called by an old colleague (played by Oliver Platt who should really stick to smaller roles like his recurring one on NBC’s The West Wing) to look into a new patient. The patient has bounced from institution to institution over the last ten years, each time being diagnosed with a different mental illness. Is she a truly troubled teen or a “brilliant mimic?” Well Dr. Conrad clears up that problem in about three minutes begging one to wonder what the hell the other doctors did for ten whole years.

The next day Dr. Conrad awakes to discover that his 8-year-old daughter (played by the truly cute Skye McCole Bartusiak) has been abducted by Bean and his baddies. They tell Dr. Conrad that he has eight hours to convince his uncooperative patient to tell him a six-digit number or his daughter dies. Pretty exciting, eh? Not really. The movie, which is running on a short time frame and should make us sweat out the clock with Dr. Conrad, takes its own sweet time. It jumps from good guy, to bad guy, to good guy’s wife, to good cop, to bad doctor, and back to the good guy. It never really gives us a chance to feel frightened for the kidnapped girl or truly worried that he won’t make the deadline. There’s no impending doom, no real danger. All Don’t Say A Word has up it’s sleeve is a stack of movie clichés and obvious plot “twists.”
As we all know from the very first frame, Dr. Conrad cracks the case, discovers some hidden motives among those close to him, and attempts to turn the tables on the kidnappers a la Mel Gibson’s Ransom. Well, if you want a good, fast-paced, tightly-wound kidnap thriller, rent that movie and save yourself some time and money.

7 February 2002