Don't say this film is above average

Maybe the one word "Don't Say a Word"'s Michael Douglas doesn't want anyone to say is "average." But this film is one of the most average movies ever released. There is nothing really great about it, but there is also nothing terrible about it either.\nDouglas plays a psychiatrist who has a schizophrenic patient, Elisabeth Burrows (Brittany Murphy), who has a six-digit number ingrained in her mind. The numeric information is very important to Patrick Kostar (Sean Bean), because it would lead him to a $10 million diamond that was once stolen from him by his partner in crime, Elisabeth's father. Dr. Nathan Conrad (Douglas) tries to learn the number as a stipulation for the return of his kidnapped daughter, Aggie (Famke Janssen).\nLike I mentioned before, the movie was very average. The acting was run of the mill, and the story was a standard mystery/thriller. The surprises don't surprise you, and the parts where the audience is supposed to jump do not make the viewer squirm at all. Murphy plays a convincing lunatic most of the time, but sometimes she reverts to just being plain annoying. Douglas' performance could have been done by any actor -- the movie just needed an above-the-title star to help sales. And the movie is just one more addition to Bean's list of idiotic criminal mastermind roles.\nBean has been featured as a criminal who throws up after seeing gunfire in "Ronin," and he played the evil Bond-threat Alec in "Goldeneye," who builds a multi-million dollar satellite dish in order to steal just a couple more million dollars. Now with this role, Bean has probably become the dumbest criminal actor in movies today. One wonders why Patrick would spend all those years searching for a diamond when he was well capable of just getting another one instead of killing and kidnapping multiple people for the first one. \nThe movie is not bad; it's just very average. It is interesting to see Douglas in a role that isn't amazing like his performances in "Wall Street," "Wonder Boys" or "Falling Down." His acting ability in this film isn't bad, it's just very luke-warm, and it goes well with the average aspect of everything else in the film.