The Unsaid

Decent; not as good as others make it seem, although I'm not a father or a counselor, I did enjoy the heart felt bits quite a lot & it's got a great cast. It was filmed in a way that could be better as a TV movie or documentary, which makes sense because the director did that previously. Pretty good movie overall; I relate to some of the depressing emotions too.

I just read all the comments. Some loved it. Some were bored with it. Some were, in my opinion, just trying to be supercritic. Here's the thing though. Having worked in the business of Social Work and Counseling, and having experienced the real world of some of these very real problems. . . I would like to simply add the comment that I thought the movie was so real it hurt. I thought the script was very realistic. It never went for the possible "extras" to hype it up. They could easily have let the former professor and his former student have an affair, they didn't. They could easily have played up the manipulation of the boy against the psychologist, they didn't. In all that it's downplayed, the realistic speaking type of performance, we were allowed to see the wretched grief, and anger, and blocked memories that do come out with horror and a bang. It was REAL. It was superb. It was better than that. From script, to acting, to film shots, to editing, from directing, and producing, from casting so perfectly a real woman who looked like a real mother, and even the psychologist's special lecture to the students at the beginning. It was all so real. So real it hurt.

A leading psychiatrist has his world turned upside down by a tragic family event. He shuns patients, until being drawn back by a young man who witnessed his father kill his mother, but seems strangely unaffected by the event.

A great script that respects the audience, leaving a lot of information off-screen. When the story moves forward a few years and Garcia and his wife have separated, we fill in the blanks automatically and never have to be told why it happened. Tommy turns up with a car, and we know fine well how he got it, some despicable act cleverly left to our imaginations. Tommy is astoundingly, creepily normal given his circumstances, until his psychosis explodes suddenly. After that he tries in vain to get it back in the box. Garcia has never been better, every inch the grief-stricken father, his expressions nuanced and painful. He handles his 'revelation' in a prison scene near the end with aplomb.

The one downside is a maudlin, overbearing score that draws too much attention to itself.

This is a film that deserves to be better known. Thrillers with this kind of plot seldom have such multi-layered characters, or believable families and settings. An intelligent, rewarding film that I look forward to watching again.

The movie in itself has a solid story. Andy Garcia is Michael Hunter a psychiatrist who loses his son by suicide. That leaves him devastated for three years, divorcing his wife and giving not the proper attention to his daughter. (We're all human, right?) By incident he gets a patient that reminds him of his son. This kid seems to be OK, but he has a troubled past. He will be released in a few weeks and Hunter must find out if that is correct. We as viewers no pretty soon, that it is not and hope that Hunter finds out before the deadline as well...

It may not seem as original and maybe it isn't, but I am still thinking about it, 12 hours after I saw it and personally I think that is great in this era of popcorn films...

Other aspects that are part of a movie, like lightning and acting are really great!! Vincent Kartheiser was probably cast because of this eyes, but he really gives a chilling performance.

This is a surprising movie that sneaks up on the viewer in many ways--starting off with a bang and never lapsing into self-indulgence or violence for it's own sake; Andy Garcia, who produced the film, obviously cares about his part and surrounded himself with actors who felt likewise, the entire cast convincing in a combination of teen problem film crossed with a psychological thriller. It is also a film about family problems, and I found it never trivial and frequently a nail-biter.

I'd never heard of this film, and would stress, with others who have written about it, that if you're thinking about watching it, you avoid written material about the plot: the surprises are half the fun!