Practically overlooked in this country comes the nail-biting French thriller, "Tell No One." Directed with a razor by Guillaume Canet and featuring a seasoned international cast including Kristin Scott Thomas, Jean Rochefort, and Nathalie Baye, "Tell No One" is determined to drag you to the edge of your seat. The tag-line alone, "8 years ago, Alex's wife was MURDERED. Today... She e-mailed him.", should be enough of a grabber for you to give this one a shot.
As they did in the Sixties and Seventies with the hard boiled novels of such American writers as David Goodis and Jim Thompson, the French have taken a novel by contemporary American thriller writer Harlan Coben and given it a unique French twist.
Francois Cluzet (the French Dustin Hoffman) plays Alex Beck, a melancholy pediatrician who lives constantly in the shadow of his wife's murder eight years previous. Rendered unconscious at the scene, he awoke in the hospital a prime suspect and a sudden confused widow. Eventually the police add her to the list of victims of a notorious serial killer but are not happy about it. Meanwhile, Alex tries to get on with his life but is forever tied to his dead childhood sweetheart.
Her family also suffers and he pays them regular sad visits where a huge emptiness lingers between them.
All this turns upside down when not only does he receive a mysterious e-mail showing his very much alive wife staring woefully into a camera, but the police discover the bodies of two long dead men near the "murder" site. Buried with a bloody bat and gunshot wounds one of these seemingly disconnected "victims" had a safety deposit key in his pocket that leads to a shotgun belonging to Alex that ballistically match another supposedly unrelated murder and photographs of his wife showing her having taken a horrific beating a year or so previous to her "murder". Did I mention the box was registered by her? Whew! This is in the first half hour folks...and all I'm going to tell you. Let's just say Alex is in for a rough week!
Adding a heaping of Hitchcock and a pinch of Polanski, "Tell No One" aims for classic thriller status and damn near makes it. Throw in some shockingly violent moments, a crooked politician, a dogged police inspector, some nasty villains including one sports bra wearing lady who has a seat squirming knowledge of organ placement and you have all the satisfying elements in place as we "run" along with poor Alex. Putting together a swell soundtrack featuring Jeff Buckley and U2 also amps along the mood.
The quibbles are minor, mainly involving possibly one too many tropes mixed with one too many denouements. All in all there is much here to recommend particularly for movie watchers looking for a more old school cerebral "thrill-ride."
FINAL VERDICT: GLOSSY THROWBACK TO THE THRILLERS OF YESTERYEAR WITH HEALTHY SHOTS OF MODERN VIOLENCE AND A KNOWING STYLE.
No comments:
Post a Comment