I have just discovered the order-a-film function on my cable TV. Oh. My. God. I know that from now on I�m not going to leave the house, become as pale as the seedlings in my window box, and spend all my money and time on deeply average films, like this one.
So Don�t Say A Word wasn�t really worth the �3.50 on my NTL bill. Here�s the plot: Michael Douglas, caring family man and psychologist, takes on the pro bono case of Brittany Murphy, who is the obligatorily cutesy, bruised wacko-in-pyjamas-and-no-bra. His beautiful wife (Janssen) is incapacitated by a broken leg, and they are being watched by Sean Bean, who has just kidnapped Douglas� daughter. As Bean tells Douglas over the phone, braless-wacko has a very important number somewhere in her disturbed mind, and as Douglas is such a good psychologist he�s not going to get his daughter back until he�s managed to get the number out of the girl. The number, as the flashbacks tell us, holds the key to finding a valuable ruby stolen and lost by Bean ten years ago.
Naturally, they get the wacko-attempts-Douglas-seduction scene out of the way, which proves a) just how much of a lovely family man Douglas is and b) just how many clich�s a director will allow in order to get Brittany Murphy to fondle her breasts on camera. This director likes his women kidnapped, strapped up, drowned, beaten to death, or locked up. The one female character with any agency not allowed any kind of character development, and anyway, just to keep things level, she gets shot too. They are all, of course, superlatively beautiful, as though they operate some kind of league-dropping dating charity for fat psychologists.
Well, once I got over the pre-Mulvey patriarchy of it all, it turned out to be a fairly average thriller. All of the twists were predictable. Quite why Sean Bean didn�t tell Douglas everything he knew about this mystery number or its location, which would have got them both closer to their goals, is one of the many tedious script flaws. Sean Bean, bless him, sticks to what he knows best, and Janssen plays a convincing but boring role. Murphy should have stuck to Girl, Interrupted, though she puts on another good performance here. |
