Tell No One

Starring: Francois Cluzet, Kristin Scott Thomas, Marie-Josee Croze, Andre Dussollier, Nathalie Baye

Directed by: Guillaume Canet

RS: 3.5of 4 Stars

2008 Music Box Films Drama

Don't you hate it when critics review mystery movies and give away all the plot twists? I do. So I won't reveal diddly about Tell No One, except to say that the young French director Guillaume Canet — channeling Hitchcock's masterpiece Vertigo while working from an American mystery novel by the uber-clever Harlan Coben — has fired off one terrific, twisty thriller. Hot-blooded, haunting and packed with the pleasures of the unexpected, Tell No One will pin you to your seat. Francois Cluzet is a marvel as Alex, the widower pediatrician who is jolted to learn that his wife Margot (Marie-Josée Croze), believed murdered eight years ago, might just be alive. The acting is uniformly first-rate, with special props going to Kristen Scott Thomas as a lesbian married to Alex's sister, François Berléand as a sly cop, the director himself as a stud with dark secrets, and Jean Rochefort and André Dussollier as two fathers too devoted to their children. The movie brims over with action — check out Alex's run through traffic on the Paris beltway — but Canet scores a triumph by plumbing the violence of the mind.