It’s easy to see how Guillaume Canet’s slick, twisty thriller scored big at the French box-office last year. Adapted from the crime novel by Harlan Coben (who co-wrote the screenplay) Tell No One is a plot-driven Running Man mystery that frequently pounds along like Dan Brown after an enforced stint in Literacy Camp. Until now, Mr. Coben – undoubtedly aware of various celluloid atrocities committed in the name of Elmore Leonard – has been reluctant to let Hollywood within a Deliverance squeal of his books.
Ah, but teaming up with Gallic heartthrob turned director M. Canet seems like a much safer bet. The French have, after all, a pretty decent track record when it comes to North American crime-fiction. At the top of the pile you have Plein Soleil, while at the bottom you have total trash. Crucially, however, it’s French trash and therefore classier than regular refuse.
Certainly, nobody could mistake Tell No One for René Clément’s masterpiece, but it’s a pleasing knot of conspiracies and counter-bluffs nonetheless. At the centre of the machinations is a terribly nice Parisian paediatrician (François Cluzet) struggling to come to terms with the brutal killing of his wife some eight years earlier. When two male bodies are discovered at the site of her murder, the investigation is reopened and all clues point squarely toward the doctor. Already spooked by surveillance footage that shows his late spouse alive and well, he attempts to clear his name by negotiating a tangle of patrician pride, child molestation, murder and, erm, U2 songs.
To accommodate all these convolutions, a near-Dickensian population is required onscreen, and the crucial revelatory scene seems to go on until next Christmas. But bring a notebook and you’ll get along just fine.