Tell No One

Tell No-one is the debut feature from Guillaume Canet, a guy arguably best known outside of France for being that bloke in The Beach who shouts "Francoise!" a lot. While he may not have seemed to be up to much then, judging from this stunning adaptation of Harlan Coben's novel of the same name, he certainly is now.

Tell No-one is the story of Dr. Alexander Beck, a man who gets an email from his wife. Boring, you say? Beck's wife was killed eight years ago in an attack that left him (in a sense) lucky to be alive. The email instructs him to "tell no-one" and with nobody to turn to, Beck throws himself into a desperate search for the woman he loved and lost.

What follows is arguably a typical array of thriller conventions: the secrets, the lies, and the inevitable betrayals, but what sets this movie apart is its pacing. Canet sheds some of Coben's superfluous subplots which ramps the tempo up so effectively that you soon forget that it's all in French. The move from the States to France also works in its favour, especially for foreign markets (as in the UK & US), as it makes the movie feel edgier and more unfamiliar than a standard American cop-chase movie. The combination of these factors give Tell No-one a freshness and intelligence that a lot of modern thrillers are lacking.

The quality of the acting (especially from Cluzet) and the dialogue, no doubt helped by Coben's writing, keeps the story believable as everyman Beck races ever closer to the truth, and to round it off, the score is great too, with clever use of familiar tracks to help keep the audience somewhat comfortable as Beck's search becomes more and more dangerous.

Tell No-one may sound like another average thriller, but its pacing and finesse place it head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd.