Movie Review: Unknown

“Unknown” is an action/thriller starring Liam Neeson as Dr. Martin Harris, who, along with his wife, played by the very beautiful January Jones, arrives in Berlin to attend an important summit on biotechnology. After forgetting his briefcase (with he and his wife’s passports,) back at the airport, Martin leaves his wife at the hotel to retrieve it. He hails a cab from another beautiful woman, played nicely by that Inglorious Bastard Diane Kruger, and ends up getting into a car accident, which leaves him in a coma for 4 days.

When he wakes up, he finds that his wife has no idea who he is, and even worse, she is already married to another man named Martin Harris…who is not he. With his identity possibly stolen, and nobody willing to believe him (except for Diane Kruger’s character), and with no identification of any kind, Martin questions his own sanity while trying to determine the truth of weather he is, or is not, the real Martin Harris.

Thus is the setup for an effective B action/thriller; that is, if B stood for ‘boring.’ I was fairly intrigued by the setup of this movie, mostly because of Liam Neeson’s performance (and his extremely beautiful leading lady co-stars...Mmmm, yes, very beautiful…Umm, I’d better just continue…) Anyway, Neeson brings a real credibility to his character; he is the kind of actor who, in his best roles, always brings a real intelligence, a quiet dignity, and occasional visceral intensity, and he brings those qualities to this role, as well; unfortunately, the script doesn’t give him a lot to work with. Mostly just a flimsy, uneven character motivated mostly by plot machinations, and not always rational behavior.

As the plot wore on, I began to ask myself: If I were in the same situation, and I could not prove to anybody that I existed, wouldn’t I try to maybe call the people that might’ve known me? For instance, Martin has the authorities unsuccessfully contact an old friend, but what about other friends? What about family members? How about looking up his Facebook page?  And wouldn’t he have ANY identification in his wallet? Not even a drivers license or Lifetime Fitness card?

I guess had I been more involved in the story I could’ve overlooked these lapses in logic (and there are a LOT more than that; how about a fight sequence where a bad guy actually pauses so that Martin can have a series of flashbacks where he remembers who he really is. In all of that flashback time, that might’ve been the best time to strike, Mr. so-called-professional-assassin-bad-guy.) But I was distracted by how confusing and utterly silly the plot became, especially in the last hour.  The plot seemed motivated more by necessity than by anybody doing anything remotely believable. As a thriller, the movie lacks suspense because I was never really invested in what was going on to really care. At a certain point, Martin Harris discovers who he really is and it is so silly that I just gave up.

“Unknown” is also an action movie so we get the usual car chases, explosions, shoot-outs, and fist fights, but they are all shot in the most routine way. Technically well crafted, but there is really nothing here I haven’t seen done much better in other movies. And do we really need another scene where the main bad guy is about to kill the hero, but instead decides to pause and tell him everything that he needs to know, so that he can than escape and figure out what to do next? Is anyone else tired of this cliché? You’d think even the bad guys in movies might’ve seen a few other movies at this point, so as to not make this mistake.

But I think it’s the producers and the screenwriters who have been watching other movies. This movie is so contrived that it shamefully steals plot elements from The “Bourne” series and “Shutter Island.” Yes, the basic plot of an innocent man and mistaken identity is at least as old as Alfred Hitchcock himself, but I am a firm believer that it is not what a movie is about, but it’s how it goes about it. “Unknown” does not go about it very well; the whole script plays like a pitch meeting where the producers where only interested in ripping off other successful movies and repacking them into their own vastly inferior movie.

All in all, aside from Liam Neeson’s performance (and the lovely January Jones & Diane Kruger) I did not much care for “Unknown.” In fact, I hope to experience the same memory lapse that Neeson’s character does…except about remembering this movie.

Movie Theater Experience:

I saw “Unknown” on Monday, February 22^nd (Presidents Day, 7:40pm show) at the Woodbury Theater. The experience was surprisingly decent, especially considering that the group of kids sitting a few rows back talked throughout the entire movie. I am glad I chose to sit closer to the front, so their comments were not as audible. I think I will choose to sit away from people more often. Anyway, the price of the ticket was surprisingly modest ($6) and it was also $6 for a medium soda and popcorn. I would gladly go back!