Robert P. Beveridge 2007-07-05
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
The Unsaid (Tom McLoughlin, 2001)
Here's a rule of thumb for you: any time the description of a piece of media, be it a book, a movie, a radio program, a scribble, what have you, begins with the words "in the tradition of," that piece of media is going to be bad. Very, very bad. Still, I was overly fond of Andy Garcia (before he got mixed up with Steven Soderbergh, anyway), so I had to see this movie. Which is "in the tradition of Primal Fear", according to the box. Ay caramba.
Garcia plays Michael Hunter, a therapist who goes into early retirement after the suicide of his son and the breakup of his family, coming into public only for the odd lecture now and then. After one of them, he is approached by Barbara Wagner (Teri Polo of The West Wing), a former student of his now a caseworker, and asks him to look over the case of a teenage boy who has everyone but her fooled. You know where this is going, right?
To its credit, I did see a few places where it looked as if it were going to veer off into the territory of slick, complex psychological thriller. It manages to avoid doing so, however, at every turn. The film makes regular reference to Thomas (Angel's Vincent Kartheiser) resembling Hunter's son Kyle, and at one point, it looks as if Thomas is going to try and play on that. There's one reference...and then that entire line of thinking disappears from the script. It's as if they tried to do it one way, decided to do it another way, didn't quite get everything revised out of the script from the first way, and then failed to catch the error. At least, I hope that's the case; if it was actually meant to come off like this, screenwriter Miguel Tejada-Flores' heart wasn't really in it. (After checking his recent credits, which include such timeless fare as Darkness and Rottweiler, however, I find I could also be incorrect in that. He could, really, just be that bad.)
There is a rule I have with "In the tradition of..." films most of the time: you're better off watching the movie that the coattail-riding dog is in the tradition of. In this case, the rule holds up. Maybe even better than most times. Garcia isn't enough to save this one. There's some serious eye candy in the triple-threat of Polo, a young Linda Cardellini, and Chelsea Field, but that's about it. * ½
