Review of Do Not Disturb

Introduction

An American pharmaceutical businessman (William Hurt) is going to Amsterdam to finalise a big deal and takes his wife (Jennifer Tilly) and daughter Melissa (Francesca Brown) along so that they can spend some time together in this cultural European city. His wife is paranoid about the `freedom` enjoyed by the Dutch while the daughter is a mute and enjoys making up bizarre stories.

Once in the city and checked into their hotel, Melissa gets lost on her way back from the hotel toilet and stumbles upon a murder someplace out in the street. The men in question see her and give chase across the city. Melissa comes across a helpful chap, Denis Leary, who escorts her to relative safety, until she falls into the sights of our bungling hit man and again the chase continues. This all happens in the space of a single night, with various parts of Amsterdam providing an interesting backdrop. Melissa is quite the resourceful 10 year old however and the hit man tries all manner of things to finish her off. Who can help her evade capture and who will believe her story?

Video

Presented with a 1.85:1 non-anamorphic transfer, Do Not Disturb looks for the most part soft. There`s a distinct loss of detail once you zoom the picture to fit a widescreen television. There aren`t any visible signs of compression but there`s some dirt which thankfully isn`t distracting. What remains of the picture looks a bit better than average with nicely balanced colours though it`s a shame this isn`t anamorphically enhanced.

Audio

Oh dear, we get a plain Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. This is an action/thriller with a lot of chase scenes and a good solid soundtrack is essential. The 2-channel sound here is not what I expected, especially since on the Continent you can buy this DVD with a 5.1 soundtrack.

What`s here is loud, clear and distortion free, but it doesn`t do the film any favours by sounding detached and uninvolving.

Features

Nice looking static menus with some background music lead to chapter selection and special features with Trailer, Cast Notes, Production Notes and a Photo Gallery.

The trailer is a long trailer and sadly gives away far more than I`d feel comfortable giving away. I simply don`t see the point in not leaving surprises for the audience. Talk about ruin the film. Cast Notes (with cast and crew) and Production Notes are quite interesting and there`s quite a few pages of the latter. Lastly the photo gallery is a collection of stills from the film itself and doesn`t really add anything in terms of special features.

A rather plain set of extras and nothing that really adds a lot of value to the DVD. There are no subtitles on this disc.

Conclusion

Filmed entirely on location in Amsterdam, Do Not Disturb is a thriller from director Dick Maas. He wrote, produced (with Lauren Geels), directed and composed the music too. Quite versatile then.

The story is interesting in concept, but I don`t think it`s properly realised. In an attempt to add some dark humour and thrills, I think the idea of the 10 year old Melissa being as deft as she is, rather than being somewhat vulnerable, was a mistake.

Once we see how well she copes against her attackers, why should we care anymore? Why would we want to empathise with the danger she`s in? I got rather bored of watching her tackle the killers on her trail and the film became all too predictable. The ending too is somewhat passé with the American family trying to rehabilitate the drug addict in Leary. We were never really convinced of his drug habit in the first place...

The casting is an interesting one. Three well known Americans in Holland`s first English speaking movie. This certainly piqued my interest, especially when you have actors of the calibre of Hurt, Tilly and Leary. Unfortunately all three aren`t stretched here at all by the script. The jokes are amusing with one or two noteworthy gags, but there`s something missing from their performances. Leary has a few good lines, but he`s not really in the film for long periods of time, while Hurt and Tilly make an interesting if unbelievable married couple. Francesca Brown as the mute girl doesn`t have much to say for herself, excuse the pun, so her performance is more physical than anything else. She`s not bad however, and more than proves herself when having to survive on the run.

There`s no doubting Maas`s technical skill as a director since he holds it all together well and uses a lot of nice long takes giving a smooth flow to the proceedings where it`s needed. The stunts too are good, as is the lighting in what`s almost a complete night shoot.

Do Not Disturb is a competent, comedic thriller and I enjoyed watching it the first time. Sadly however it has little replay value because of some of the annoyances already mentioned. Perhaps this film should be skewed at a younger audience? Some of the comedy was amusing the first time around, and some of it still works the next time, but this is a pitfall of writing humour into scripts. It`s subjective and we already know what`s coming next.

It was called `Silent Witness` in the US and has been available in Europe for some time as `Do Not Disturb` though with a different cover, enhanced video transfer and DD5.1 sound.

As this stands, it`s an average film with average extras, a non-anamorphic transfer and only a DD2.0 soundtrack. Not worth buying, but worth a rent if there`s little else out that you fancy. I know money could be better spent on a different title though.