Have you ever had something that sounded really great in your head but sounded really lame when you said it out loud? That's what this movie is like. You can understand why The Unsaid seemed like a good story in theory. In the actual telling, though, you can see that it's lacking in so many ways even before the film takes a hard left turn into Idiotville at the end.
The movie starts with the suicide of the son of psychologist Michael Hunter (Andy Garcia). The kid is obviously disturbed about something, but Michael and the rest of the family decide that leaving him alone in the house is the greatest idea they've ever heard. The family returns to find him dead in the garage of carbon monoxide poisoning, giving Andy Garcia the chance to yell and carry on the way actors love to do.
Three years later, Michael is now sporting a beard bigger than his head. He writes books on psychology and refuses to see patients. His wife has divorced him and his daughter Shelly (Linda Cardellini) has little use for him. That's when Barbara Lonigan (Teri Polo), an old student of Michael's, asks him to help a young man who is about to age out of the state care system. Tommy Caffey (Vincent Kartheiser) appears to be perfectly normal, something Barbara finds doubtful given that Tommy has never expressed any anger or grief over his father killing Tommy's mother when he was a child. At first Michael refuses but, after shaving off the jungle ecosystem growing on his face, agrees to try and get past Tommy's defenses to the secret pain underneath.
While that's going on, Tommy manages to sneak out of the state home where he lives and meets Shelly. She, like a lot of young women, mistakes his mental and emotional dysfunction for being all deep and soulful. Tommy seems to like Shelly, but he also uses her to find out about Michael's son and then uses that information to manipulate Michael in their impromptu therapy sessions.
I'm sure it's clear how The Unsaid seemed like a good story in theory. You'd think a psychological thriller about a man trying to deal with his own emotional wounds from his son's suicide while helping another troubled young man, only to discover his patient is more violent and crazy than he first thought, would make a great film. It really doesn't, though, and the reasons for that are legion.
Let me just touch on a few. The secret of Tommy's pain is so obvious that you'll guess what it is at least 40 minutes before the movie even hints at it. Sitting around waiting for a film to tell you what you already know always sucks. Making it worse this time is that to reveal Tommy's secret, the story first pulls virtually the same secret about Michael's son completely out of the filmmakers collective ass. There's absolutely NOTHING in the story that foreshadows or supports the revelation about Michael's son, yet without it the movie wouldn't be able to reveal Tommy's secret. I don't want to spoil The Crying Game for you, but imagine if 15 minutes before that film's big discovery, the story played out almost the exact same scenario with another character. That's what The Unsaid is like.
The movie also never decides if Tommy is a good person with psychological problems or a screwed-up bad person. So, sometimes he behaves like someone who needs to be helped and sometimes he's much more malevolent. That may be realistic, psychologically speaking, but it makes for a fictional character that is muddled and a story without a moral compass. The story wants us to be afraid of Tommy because he does terrible things but also empathize with him. Those two emotions don't easily mix.
Vincent Kartheiser does what he can with Tommy, appearing both creepy and vulnerable when the Almighty Plot Hammer requires it. Linda Cardellini and Teri Polo also do fine jobs, but Garcia essentially sleepwalks through his role. He plays Michael Hunter as Generic Thriller Hero, with nothing original at all about the performance.
And then we get the crappy ending. The two most common problems in screenplays are having a great beginning and ending but no middle, and having a great buildup but an ending that stinks on ice. The Unsaid is definitely the latter. I am not exaggerating when I say that after trying to be a psychological thriller, it's like the film simply gives up and morphs into a Steven Seagal flick, complete with car chase and armed standoff. I half expected Michael Hunter to sprout a pony tail and start karate chopping people.
Finally, let me note that this film is very slow. I mean this .movie .is .very .slow. If you can't get to sleep some night, watching The Unsaid would work better than a glass of warm milk.
This movie isn't so aggressively horrible that you'll want to throw something at your TV. There are just many better examples of this genre that you should be watching instead.
The movie starts with the suicide of the son of psychologist Michael Hunter (Andy Garcia). The kid is obviously disturbed about something, but Michael and the rest of the family decide that leaving him alone in the house is the greatest idea they've ever heard. The family returns to find him dead in the garage of carbon monoxide poisoning, giving Andy Garcia the chance to yell and carry on the way actors love to do.
Three years later, Michael is now sporting a beard bigger than his head. He writes books on psychology and refuses to see patients. His wife has divorced him and his daughter Shelly (Linda Cardellini) has little use for him. That's when Barbara Lonigan (Teri Polo), an old student of Michael's, asks him to help a young man who is about to age out of the state care system. Tommy Caffey (Vincent Kartheiser) appears to be perfectly normal, something Barbara finds doubtful given that Tommy has never expressed any anger or grief over his father killing Tommy's mother when he was a child. At first Michael refuses but, after shaving off the jungle ecosystem growing on his face, agrees to try and get past Tommy's defenses to the secret pain underneath.
While that's going on, Tommy manages to sneak out of the state home where he lives and meets Shelly. She, like a lot of young women, mistakes his mental and emotional dysfunction for being all deep and soulful. Tommy seems to like Shelly, but he also uses her to find out about Michael's son and then uses that information to manipulate Michael in their impromptu therapy sessions.
I'm sure it's clear how The Unsaid seemed like a good story in theory. You'd think a psychological thriller about a man trying to deal with his own emotional wounds from his son's suicide while helping another troubled young man, only to discover his patient is more violent and crazy than he first thought, would make a great film. It really doesn't, though, and the reasons for that are legion.
Let me just touch on a few. The secret of Tommy's pain is so obvious that you'll guess what it is at least 40 minutes before the movie even hints at it. Sitting around waiting for a film to tell you what you already know always sucks. Making it worse this time is that to reveal Tommy's secret, the story first pulls virtually the same secret about Michael's son completely out of the filmmakers collective ass. There's absolutely NOTHING in the story that foreshadows or supports the revelation about Michael's son, yet without it the movie wouldn't be able to reveal Tommy's secret. I don't want to spoil The Crying Game for you, but imagine if 15 minutes before that film's big discovery, the story played out almost the exact same scenario with another character. That's what The Unsaid is like.
The movie also never decides if Tommy is a good person with psychological problems or a screwed-up bad person. So, sometimes he behaves like someone who needs to be helped and sometimes he's much more malevolent. That may be realistic, psychologically speaking, but it makes for a fictional character that is muddled and a story without a moral compass. The story wants us to be afraid of Tommy because he does terrible things but also empathize with him. Those two emotions don't easily mix.
Vincent Kartheiser does what he can with Tommy, appearing both creepy and vulnerable when the Almighty Plot Hammer requires it. Linda Cardellini and Teri Polo also do fine jobs, but Garcia essentially sleepwalks through his role. He plays Michael Hunter as Generic Thriller Hero, with nothing original at all about the performance.
And then we get the crappy ending. The two most common problems in screenplays are having a great beginning and ending but no middle, and having a great buildup but an ending that stinks on ice. The Unsaid is definitely the latter. I am not exaggerating when I say that after trying to be a psychological thriller, it's like the film simply gives up and morphs into a Steven Seagal flick, complete with car chase and armed standoff. I half expected Michael Hunter to sprout a pony tail and start karate chopping people.
Finally, let me note that this film is very slow. I mean this .movie .is .very .slow. If you can't get to sleep some night, watching The Unsaid would work better than a glass of warm milk.
This movie isn't so aggressively horrible that you'll want to throw something at your TV. There are just many better examples of this genre that you should be watching instead.