Tell No One

This confusing film from France does the Hitchcockian thriller thing by dropping clues out of context for about 45 minutes. Then things start to come together until, about 90 minutes in, you get a decent idea of what’s happening. Then someone comes along and explains it all, which is actually a relief. François Cluzet stars as Dr. Alexandre Beck, whose wife, Margot, might have been killed by a serial killer eight years earlier. Either that, or everyone is chasing Dr. Beck because of an incredibly unlikely plot involving a senator, a pederast, some hired goons, a corrupt police department, a hemophiliac child and a very shaggy dog (literally!). Tell No One becomes amusing by the end of the second act, but you have to sit through a lot to get there. Still, director Guillaume Canet, working from writer Harlan Coben’s novel, has a decent sense of the plot twist, and he includes a great on-foot chase scene. If you’ve got the patience for the first third of the film, Tell No One pays off in the end—but unless you’ve got about two tons of patience, you probably don’t have enough