Blu-Ray Review: ‘Tell No One’ Deserves Positive Word-of-Mouth Buzz

Blu-Ray Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Guillaume Canet’s excellent “Tell No One” is perhaps the only 2008 thriller to truly deserve the often overused term, “Hitchockian”. The master would have enjoyed this twisting and turning ride that ironically had enough people talking to make it the most successful foreign language film in the United States last year with $6 million in domestic receipts (yes, I’m sad too that such a low total can claim that title).

The lines on the front of the Blu-Ray case for “Tell No One” sum up the basic plot pretty well and only a heartless critic would give away much more - “Eight years ago, Alex’s wife was murdered. Today she emailed him.”

Tell No One will be released on Blu-Ray on March 31st, 2009.
Photo credit: MPI

“Tell No One” is one of those fantastic thrillers that does what Hitchcock did so well - it stays just a step ahead of the audience at every turn as its excellent director leads you down the cinematic path through every twist of a screenplay based on the book by mega-popular mystery writer Harlan Coben (“One False Move,” “Hold Tight,” “Long Lost”).

Tell No One will be released on Blu-Ray on March 31st, 2009. Photo credit: MPI

In a very underrated performance, Francois Cluzet plays pediatrician Alexandre Beck, a man who goes off the beaten path with his wife (the great Marie Josee Croze of “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) to return to a family property when the young lovers were ambushed. She ended up murdered. Or so he thinks until he receives an email supposedly from his deceased wife. And the video he sees shortly thereafter makes his jaw drop.

Like “The Man Who Knew Too Much” or “Rear Window,” “Tell No One” is about an average man caught in an increasingly confusing and deadly situation. Alex not only has to figure out what happened to his wife but gets framed for murder himself, putting him on the run. “Tell No One” is a wonderful thrill ride, a nearly flawless mystery that flies by in the blink of an eye.

Music Box Films handled the release of “Tell No One” in theaters and the Blu-Ray has been handled by MPI. For a smaller company, they do an excellent job with the video and audio, also providing the film with a reasonably entertaining collection of special features. The lack of a commentary track on a film that could have clearly been enhanced by one loses the final product a ratings point, but it’s the only complaint for a title that everyone should rent and serious mystery or French film fans should simply buy.

“Tell No One” is presented in 1080p High Definition with a 16x9 aspect ration and average bitrate of 36 MBPS. It looks great. And the audio matches the video with a Dolby Digital original French track @640Kbps. You can also listen to a dubbed track in two channels, but, please, don’t. Special features include deleted scenes, outtakes, and “Tell No One: The B-Side” (a Blu-Ray exclusive “making of” featurette).

The adult mystery thriller has gone downhill in the last few years with Hollywood consistently getting it wrong by thinking that the twist is more important than anything else (think train wrecks like Halle Berry’s “Perfect Stranger”). “Tell No One” is a character-driven mystery. Hitch himself would have loved it.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com