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Don't Say A Word
Release Date: 22nd February 2002
Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox
Certificate: 15
Starring: Michael Douglas, Brittany Murphy, Sean Bean, Famke Janssen, Jennifer Esposito, Oliver Platt
Director: Gary Fleder
Running Time: 120 mins
Preeminent New York psychiatrist Dr. Nathan Conrad (Douglas) has a successful Upper West Side practice, a beautiful wife and a charming daughter. Making his way home to begin a tranquil Thanksgiving holiday, Conrad is summoned by a colleague to examine a young woman.

Elisabeth Burrows presents a history of unexplained violence and a miasma of failed treatments and misdiagnoses. In short, Elisabeth is the kind of case Nathan used to live for before he went “uptown.”

Now, he is Elisabeth’s last chance before she is shipped off to a purgatory of state institutionalization.
Nathan’s skills and intuition make headway into Elisabeth’s case, and his curiosity is further aroused by her mysterious first words to him: “You want what they want, don’t you? … I’ll never tell … any of you.”

Little does Nathan suspect that Elisabeth and her cryptic message are tied to a danger that has closed in on him and his family. Nathan’s daughter has been kidnapped by ruthless thieves, and to save her, he somehow must unlock a six-digit number locked away in Elisabeth’s troubled mind.

There is no discussion, no negotiation. With his daughter’s captors watching his every move, Nathan is trapped in a nightmare even he could never have envisioned. And as Nathan is reminded constantly by his tormentors: if he wants to see his daughter alive, he dare not say a single word.
Novelist Andrew Klavan, who received the Mystery Writers of America’s “Edgar” award for best mystery novel of the year, for Don’t Say A Word, draws inspiration for his nerve-shattering adventure tales from a variety of sources #150; even a new-born baby.
After his daughter’s birth, he would awaken every few hours each night to check on her. “One night,” Klavan remembers, “I wondered, ‘What if I looked in … and she was gone?’” From that disturbing thought – representing every parent’s nightmare #150; “the basics of the story unrolled in front of me.”

Much to the chagrin of his wife, Klavan set the story in his own New York apartment.