With it's convoluted plot, hackneyed script and not so surprising 'twist' ending, this movie is not one of the best thrillers to come out of Hollywood in the past ten years.
Marlee Matlin seems to be sleep walking through her role as Jillian Shanahan, a deaf woman who is unknowingly given a rare stolen coin and is now being pursued by the various parties who want to get their hands on it. Martin Sheen as the corrupt policeman Lt. Brock does a play it by numbers bad guy routine, while the usually good D.B. Sweeney as the insomniac restauranteur/rock climber Ben Kendal appears to be wondering how he got mixed up in all this, both figuratively and literally.
That is not to say it doesn't have its moments. The scene where Jillian's friend is attacked is quite chilling and the part where Jillian teaches Ben to swear in sign language is cute. And Ben's morning grumpiness definitely struck a chord with a fellow insomniac.
But over all the whole thing doesn't quite gel. Matlin and Sweeney have little chemistry and their characters seem to fall for each other a bit too quickly to be plausible. You have to wonder why Ben would go to such lengths for a person he hardly knows, while Jillian is too much the damsel in distress, even though she's supposed to be this fiesty, independent woman who has risen above her disability. Sheen comes off the worst as the bad-guy cop who beats up suspects while listening to opera. His character has no shades of grey and is just your standard authoritarian thug who deserves his comeuppance. The funeral scene is embarrassingly trite and the whole FBI sting sequence is corny and contrived, while you can just see the 'surprise' ending coming a mile a way. Watch it once then forget about it.
