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This movie provides in the thrills department. It stars Michael Douglas in the lead role (and he IS well cast) as a psychiatrist whose daughter is kidnapped by a bunch of men who want him to extract a six-digit number from a mentally disturbed young lady. Both parties then proceed to match wits en route to a great climax towards the end of the movie.

This was based on the book by the same name. The book was quite good, too. I rank this movie as your typical thriller with good twists.

*** out of ****

Overall, I really liked this movie, which surprised me a little bit. The trailers I had seen for it had me thinking it was going to be kind of "cheesy" for lack of a better word, but this was actually very engrossing. It had an interesting story line, sustained suspense and for the most part was well acted.

I particularly liked Brittany Murphy as Elisabeth Burrows, the psychiatric inmate whose tortured mind holds the information that Dr. Conrad (Michael Douglas) needs to get in order to save his young daughter Jessie's (Skye McCole Bartusiak) life. Murphy seemed so "into" her character that it was almost spooky to watch her. She was extremely convincing. Douglas I thought also offered up a good performance, as did Sean Bean as Patrick, the head kidnapper. Young Miss Bartusiak was commendable but to me didn't seem to portray the range of emotions I would expect a young child to be feeling in Jesse's circumstances. She just seemed altogether too calm. The same could be said for Famke Janssen as Jessie's mother Aggie Conrad. I realize the character had a broken leg and apparently couldn't get out of bed, but again she just seemed to take the whole thing too calmly (and, when her own life was threatened she seemed able to move around well enough, broken leg or not!) As for Oliver Platt as Conrad's colleague Dr. Sachs? I find that, depending on the movie, I either like Platt or don't (no middle ground) and I didn't care for him in this movie.

Overall, though, the movie was quite good as a vehicle for Douglas. I'd rate it as a 7/10.

"Don't Say A Word" belongs to that group of films that, while they're not bad, do nothing to stand out from the crowd.

The surprise twists in the story are so over-foreshadowed that they end up being no surprise at all.

The casting of a Brit as the head villain was a cliche twenty years ago - now it is truly old hat and shows a lack of imagination on the part of the producers and casting agents. This is compounded by the lack of an interesting an original script for grade A actor Sean Bean to work with. Brittany Murphy is also shortchanged by the script, and what at first appears to be a promising performance is not allowed to blossom.

This is symptomatic of the film as a whole - truly dramatic events are underplayed, and as a result the film feels like it has no climaxes.

"Don't Say A Word" is a film with an interesting premise that has been produced as a run-of-the-mill thriller.

A sad, unfortunate fact about this movie is that the 2 young female stars Brittany Murphy and Skye McCole Bartusiak (who plays the daughter of Michael Douglas) both died in a young age.

Anyway, this is a conventional thriller, nothing extraordinary. Although the critics hated it, it manage to become a commercial success doubling its budget in box office.

The plot is flimsy and fragile: The daughter of a psychiatrist is kidnapped, and her kidnappers want from his to "extract" a secret from a young woman who is imprisoned in a mental institution, that could lead them to a valuable object they tried to stole some years ago.

It starts slow but soon some action picks-up but it becomes exaggerated and coincidental maybe even absurd.

Michael Douglas does what he cans to save the movie but doesn't seem enough.

Overall: If you can catch it on TV watch it, but never think of paying a single dollar/euro/whatever for it.

Here's another interesting kidnap story. Sean Bean always plays a believable villain and Michael Douglas usually plays roles that keep the audience's attention....so the almost- two hours go by pretty quickly. The whole cast, actually, pretty good with no one person standing out.

The story loses points because the ending goes on too long and has the standard villain-holds-the-gun-and-doesn't shoot-too long cliché which drives critics, me included crazy. That, and a bit too many f-words in here by the female cop (Jennifer Esposito) which simply aren't necessary, and a few other holes all reduce this from a sure 9-star to an "8.....but don't misunderstand: it's worth a look.