DON'T SAY A WORD

Fox Home Entertainment

Special Features DVD, $29.95

Dr. Nathan Conrad is a prominent New York psychologist with a loving wife and daughter.  When his daughter is taken from the family apartment, the kidnappers demand a 6-digit figure as ransom.  These 6 digits, needed to unlock something of value to the kidnappers, are buried deep within the memory of Dr. Conrad's newest patient; a troubled teenage girl named Elisabeth Burrows.  With time running short, Dr. Conrad must convince Elisabeth to trust him and remember her painful past.

Don't Say A Word stars Michael Douglas, Sean Bean, Brittany Murphy, Guy Torry, Jennifer Esposito, Famke Janssen, and Oliver Platt.  The movie was directed by Gary Fleder and features music by Mark Isham.  It is rated R with a feature running time of 113 minutes.           

The film is presented in an anamorphic widescreen version (2.35:1).  The overall quality of the transfer is very good.  Images are clean and colors are accurate with fully saturated hues.  There is solid contrast and black levels are dark.  Picture defect mastering is perfect with no major flaws or compression artifacts.

Video Rating: 8 out of 10

The following spoken language options are available for this movie: English DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 surround, and Spanish 2.0 channel surround.  (Despite an indication on the DVD packaging to the contrary, there is not a French 2.0 track available.)  An English subtitle track is available along with English closed captions.  The English DTS 5.1 track is the basis for this review.  Dialogue is intelligible and natural sounding.  The surround channels are very active and are used for both sound effects and music.  Discrete channel activity is present in all five channels plus there is wonderful usage of side-to-side panning across the forward soundstage.  The LFE channel is deep and adds greatly to Mark Isham's chilling music.

Audio Rating: 8 out of 10

The tactile sound effects are average and present in most of the DVD's chapters.  Subtle and moderate impacts are the types of tactile effect that can be experienced on this disc.  The best tactile moments take place in chapter 1 (explosions during the bank caper), chapter 22 (subway flashback sequence), and in chapter 30 (dirt cascading into the open grave.)

Tactile Sound Effects Rating: 6 out of 10

Bonus features include an audio commentary with director Gary Fleder; scene-specific audio commentaries with actors Michael Douglas, Brittany Murphy, Oliver Platt, Sean Bean and Famke Janssen; 8-minute Making of featurette; cast & crew bios; Wall Street theatrical trailer; set tour featurette; film scoring featurette; screening room dailies; Brittany Murphy screen test; 2 storyboard-to-screen comparisons; 3 deleted scenes; interactive menus and scene access.

Bonus Features Rating: 8 out of 10