Unknown (2011)

My biggest problem with Unknown is the vast contrast between the film's marketing campaign which presented the film as a stylish and efficient action movie in the same vein as star Liam Neeson's breakthrough actioner Taken. First off, this film is not action film. It's a psychological thriller built around a poorly constructed mystery about a doctor (Neeson) who has a car accident on the way to a scientific conference in Berlin and when he awakens finds that a another man has assumed his identity. Now, on its face the premise could make for a interesting film but it falls down in execution. It often feels like the filmmakers are making up the story as it goes along and badly at that. As a rip roaring thrill rides go, Unknown plays out like a lazy trip through a hastily assembled carnival dark ride. The film starts out promisingly, efficiently establishing the relationship between Neeson and his wife (January Jones) and just as efficiently shatters it after the well staged car accident that leaves Neeson amnesic and disappointing frail. He spends most of the film mopey and confused about his circumstances which is probably a realistic reaction to finding another person living your life and that your wife of many years claims she's never met you but it makes Neeson a less than satisfying lead character. Action heroes can mournful and even entrenched in melancholia (The Crow). We can follow that guy. But a guy that's unsure and simpering? A man's who never shows more than a glimmer of proactive anger? It's hard to get behind that guy. Director Jaume Collet-Serra does get some mileage out of Neeson's miraculous third act memory return. It's genuinely exciting to Neeson finally unleash all of cold "I have a very special set of skills" fury on the men that have been manipulating him since the film began. But a bit of fury isn't enough to sustain a film that's as much as a patchwork as this is. Unknown seems like a film that doesn't know what it wants to be. It's nominally a mystery with some very awkward socio-politicial commentary immigrants have it rough and major corporations have malicious intentions, snore - but it's also a film that makes a play for the space that the Jason Bourne series, that of the Euro flavored, vaguely heartless travelogue actioner. There's also a lot of the Polanski-esque dread that Collet-Serra brought to his breakthrough film Orphan. Unfortunately that dread never reaches a proper crescendo. Collet-Serra is a director who can set up a joke but can never get the punchline out right. Despite the numerous poor choices that informed Neeson's work, Collet-Serra gets uniformly solid performances out of his cast. Jones is cold and machine like as always but since her character is a cipher with little to do she comes off better than she did in X-Men: First Class. Diane Kruger (Inglorious Basterds) as the cab driver who was at the wheel during Neeson's fateful crash is as compelling as an underwritten Hollywood female sidekick can be. She's nervy and at first extremely disinterested in helping Neeson piece his life back together as the crash exposed her status as an illegal immigrant. The clarity and visceral nature of her terror at being deported stands out in a film where almost all the actors underplay their roles. Hopefully she'll find material worthy her talents. Unknown isn't the action film it was billed as and it also not a very good mystery. After his crash Neeson, wakes up in a hospital and checks himself out against doctor's orders and goes to the hotel where he and his wife are check in. His wife claim's he's a stranger and another claims his number and his documents to back it up which Neeson conveniently doesn't have. He subsequently contacts a friend (an underused Frank Langella) back in the US to back up his claims and he continues to stock his wife with an insistence that rivals that of tourist seeking a cab on a city street. While trying to pick up the pieces of his life only to find that they don't fit together. Once it becomes clear that Neeson isn't quite who he remembers himself to be, the main thrust of the film becomes finding out why Neeson was really in Berlin. This strange dropping of the film's central mystery leaves the burden of interest on Collet-Serra's direction and he simple doesn't have the chops to carry you along to the end. The verve of the film's last half hour becomes numbing since there's little doubt that Neeson will expose the conspiracy behind his predicament and put an end to it's sinister intentions. That's how all action movies work. Taken is an incredibly simple film that used it's minimal plot as a way to put Neeson in situations that he'd have to murder his way out of. Unknown has a needlessly complex plot that facilitates a few fleeting set pieces and a lot of grating exposition. Unknown, judged on its own is a mediocre film. Judged against the claims of a cathartic ultra violence it's a deeply disappointing film. And there are few things more tedious than an unsuccessful action movie.