User reviews

This is one of the best films I have seen all year. I notice how few votes it has received and assume that it has gone mostly unnoticed. The words "I don't see how it could have been made any better come to mind.". A psychological thriller which kept my interest level throughout the entire film. Thoughtful, believable, emotionally moving and extremely well acted. Highly recommended!

Direct to video release produced and starring Andy Garcia. Also starring Vincent Kartheiser (Mad Men) and Linda Cadellini (Freaks and Geeks).

Definitely a melodrama, slow moving but with some interesting plot points. Vincent Kartheiser is good as the troubled young man, playing both creepy and vulnerable. A young Linda Cardellini is beautiful as always and as anyone who saw Freaks and Geeks knows is excellent as portraying a realistic teenager. She also sings a song. Andy Garcia is a bit subdued but realistic enough in the main role.

Overall it's fairly middling. Overly melodramatic at times and the ending is poor. Honestly I enjoyed it mostly because of seeing a few more famous actor's (Kartheiser and Cardellini)in an early role.

It's a 2:00 AM on a cable kind of a movie. Not terrible, but not exactly good

A leading psychiatrist has his world turned upside down by a tragic family event. He shuns patients, until being drawn back by a young man who witnessed his father kill his mother, but seems strangely unaffected by the event.

A great script that respects the audience, leaving a lot of information off-screen. When the story moves forward a few years and Garcia and his wife have separated, we fill in the blanks automatically and never have to be told why it happened. Tommy turns up with a car, and we know fine well how he got it, some despicable act cleverly left to our imaginations. Tommy is astoundingly, creepily normal given his circumstances, until his psychosis explodes suddenly. After that he tries in vain to get it back in the box. Garcia has never been better, every inch the grief-stricken father, his expressions nuanced and painful. He handles his 'revelation' in a prison scene near the end with aplomb.

The one downside is a maudlin, overbearing score that draws too much attention to itself.

This is a film that deserves to be better known. Thrillers with this kind of plot seldom have such multi-layered characters, or believable families and settings. An intelligent, rewarding film that I look forward to watching again.

I just read all the comments. Some loved it. Some were bored with it. Some were, in my opinion, just trying to be supercritic. Here's the thing though. Having worked in the business of Social Work and Counseling, and having experienced the real world of some of these very real problems. . . I would like to simply add the comment that I thought the movie was so real it hurt. I thought the script was very realistic. It never went for the possible "extras" to hype it up. They could easily have let the former professor and his former student have an affair, they didn't. They could easily have played up the manipulation of the boy against the psychologist, they didn't. In all that it's downplayed, the realistic speaking type of performance, we were allowed to see the wretched grief, and anger, and blocked memories that do come out with horror and a bang. It was REAL. It was superb. It was better than that. From script, to acting, to film shots, to editing, from directing, and producing, from casting so perfectly a real woman who looked like a real mother, and even the psychologist's special lecture to the students at the beginning. It was all so real. So real it hurt.

If you are a father, and you lose a son you will find this motion picture a little to hard to endure 'till the end of it. A good script, directed almost perfectly. I watch it once and i will always remember as i remember my child. The music was i may say, everything ... Actors doing such a great job... Andy Garcia playing so well that you may think that is not a movie but a Real TV story. A drama who can keep you with the eyes on it 'till the end. You'll never know what its gonna happened next. Dunno if i wanna watch it again. It was a movie that made me cry... something that its almost impossible for me. Maybe i'm a not a good person to comment this movie, because some of what happened there i lived and its hard to be equidistant, but it moved me so bad.

Decent; not as good as others make it seem, although I'm not a father or a counselor, I did enjoy the heart felt bits quite a lot & it's got a great cast. It was filmed in a way that could be better as a TV movie or documentary, which makes sense because the director did that previously. Pretty good movie overall; I relate to some of the depressing emotions too.

This is a surprising movie that sneaks up on the viewer in many ways--starting off with a bang and never lapsing into self-indulgence or violence for it's own sake; Andy Garcia, who produced the film, obviously cares about his part and surrounded himself with actors who felt likewise, the entire cast convincing in a combination of teen problem film crossed with a psychological thriller. It is also a film about family problems, and I found it never trivial and frequently a nail-biter.

I'd never heard of this film, and would stress, with others who have written about it, that if you're thinking about watching it, you avoid written material about the plot: the surprises are half the fun!

The movie in itself has a solid story. Andy Garcia is Michael Hunter a psychiatrist who loses his son by suicide. That leaves him devastated for three years, divorcing his wife and giving not the proper attention to his daughter. (We're all human, right?) By incident he gets a patient that reminds him of his son. This kid seems to be OK, but he has a troubled past. He will be released in a few weeks and Hunter must find out if that is correct. We as viewers no pretty soon, that it is not and hope that Hunter finds out before the deadline as well...

It may not seem as original and maybe it isn't, but I am still thinking about it, 12 hours after I saw it and personally I think that is great in this era of popcorn films...

Other aspects that are part of a movie, like lightning and acting are really great!! Vincent Kartheiser was probably cast because of this eyes, but he really gives a chilling performance.

Based on R1 DVD.

After checking with IMDb I watched Unsaid with low expectations. Fortunately the film appears to be underrated at least in my eyes. Garcia and Kartheiser give strong performances and not withstanding an occasional weakness in a script that favours the 'girls do dumb things' school of thought the movie moves along at a good pace.

During the directors commentary McLoughlin notes that Americans have a much tougher time with the big secret than Europeans. Perhaps this accounts for the weak IMDb rating.

Well worth watching, 7/10.

Reasonable psychologic thriller where a trouble-minded young man tries to prove to his personal social assistant that he is mentally able to return to social life. In this way, he finds a famous doctor (Garcia) who loses his own son and is trying to start over again. The premise is not original and the director fails to estabilish a tense pulse over the narrative that goes on with few gritting moments. Garcia is correct as usual and Kartheiser is outstanding in the role of Tommy. I give this a 06 (six).

The title of the film is a perfect depiction of what the story is about: "The Unsaid" is a journey full of agony and tension, into the deep-buried and untold secrets lurking in the hearts of Tommy Caffey (Kartheiser) and his therapist, Dr. Michael Hunter (Garcia).

Dr. Hunter, who has not completely recovered from the shock of his son's Kyle (Blumas) suicide, is persuaded by a former student of his, Dr. Wagner (Polo), to take the case of a seemingly normal adolescent, Tommy. The young boy, who in the past suffered a deeply traumatic experience by watching his father kill his mother, initially gets along well with his new therapist; moreover, Dr. Hunter himself seems to draw comfort from the boy's presence, as he reminds him of his lost son. However, things gradually become more complicated, as Tommy and Shelly (Cordellini), the daughter of Dr. Hunter, meet and become fond of each other; moreover, Tommy's case is not as simple as it first seemed...

The film portrays three troubled characters: Kyle, Tommy, and Hunter himself. The performances by the respective actors, namely Blumas, Kartheiser, and Garcia, are simply superb. Although one might expect such A-level acting by a star of Andy Garcia's caliber, it is positively surprising and very heartening to watch young actors doing such a good job. Cordellini is also very convincing as Hunter's detached and confused daughter, while the rest of the cast remains on a generally satisfactory level.

McLoughlin's direction is balanced and well-executed, building up the tension when he should, but without resorting to needless exaggerations.

"The Unsaid" is overall a solid film that studies the secrets buried inside the human soul. 7/10.

I have seen a lot of movies with actors/actresses playing psychiatrists and how they are portrayed. Most of them are quite horrible, a few have a clue, but are saying things, psychiatrists in the field wouldn't say under any circumstances. However, the title THE UNSAID is; if not perfect, very close to it. Andy Garcia again pulls off what I feel maybe the hardest thing to pull off; a professional actor being a professional psychiatrist. I think the acting on every ones part was superb as well as the lighting and make up. I think a lot of detail was put in things as simple as sitting in a chair, when to lean back, when to lean forward. An excellent movie, I highly recommend it.

" I just don't understand what the director wants to tell us. The script has an awful lot of gaps and is not very convincing. For example, why would this physical disturbed patient try to mess up with his doctor and his daughter while he can get out of the institution in two weeks? It just don't make sense and it's all to obvious. The film is also a bit slow and misses the tension of an exciting thriller. Good old Andy is ok though."

I hate movies where you know the answer after 10 minutes. Why couldn't the director leave something for the imagination? The movie could have been interesting, but it is completely destroyed by some weird need to underline all of the character's actions, so you are never left to think and wonder, just fed with 1 hour and 50 minutes of boring psychological drama.

There are many kinds of thriller/drama movies.

Some have the ability to confuse and bore you to death during most of the time, with just some good twist in the end, which "should" compensate for the "lentish", sacrificing hour before that. And many overrated movies have that formula, which only works because you become so numb as you watch it, that you feel very surprised by the final outcome of the plot, and then believe that it was such a terrific film.

Others are the exact opposite, meaning that they have a great starting point, but the story gets duller and duller until the final result becomes very predictable. And so many other variations of this genre may arise.

With `The Unsaid', however, you can expect to be tied to your seat the whole time as the plot develops. It has a dramatic starting point, a powerful and constant *thrilling* middle section and well, I won't refer the ending because, believe it, if you start watching this flick, you won't go away until you see the whole thing. It's that good! But that's me, I personally like movies that grab your attention from the start and make you not even take bathroom breaks or answer to your cell-phone calls. What about you?

The acting by Andy Garcia was brilliant; he really got inside his character. Only with a role like this could he show his true dramatic acting skills, and was followed very well by the rest of the cast. The directing was ok, and had some notorious influence on our understanding and dramatic effect of the scenes. It was done the way it's supposed to, clean and sober, even in action sequences. I won't refer to the story or the subjects it's about, since none of that is necessary here. This is a review, not a `plot outline'.

The bottom line is this: it's a definitely worth watching film! And if you're not entertained during and pleased after it, well. admit it: You watched some movie other than `The Unsaid'.

I was definitely expecting more and found myself a little disappointed. Andy Garcia is what truly holds the film together, he is a great actor. The story was interesting with a splash of mystery at the beginning, but soon took a sinister turn that became predictable. It felt like they were trying to add something interesting to a film that had a simple story/plot to spice it up, but instead fell short. Entertaining, but far from a masterpiece.