Saturday, November 7, 2015

Unknown (2011)


RATING: C

Ha ha, relatively unknown movie is called "Unknown." Anyways... partially due to the release of Taken, Liam Neeson has become something of an action superstar in recent years, and is sometimes seen dealing out punishment to unfortunate villains and mercenaries. "Unknown" is one such action thriller, which takes on a couple of familiar plot devices for its story. 

Martin Harris is visiting a biotechnology summit in Berlin with his wife, and he ends up in a car accident and receives a head injury. He regains consciousness in a hospital after four days with some very slight memory loss, and when he sees his wife again, she does not recognize him and another man *also* named Martin Harris is with her now. Yes, Harris is victim to a massive identity theft conspiracy. And now he has to find a way to somehow get his life back. Despite assassins being on his tail who also want him dead (seemingly to make sure the original Harris is dead). 

Unknown is a bit of a strange movie in some ways. It starts out surprisingly dull for the first 45 minutes or so, as we are subjected to cliches (and normally I don't care about those) and Liam Neeson stumbles around getting seemingly nowhere with his mystery for a while. Eventually, things finally break loose, we get a pretty decent car chase scene, and the secrets are finally revealed. 

And we do end up getting a pretty stunning plot twist that we couldn't have seen coming... in part because it felt like it was in the wrong movie. At first it seems as if we're watching an identity theft conspiracy movie... and then suddenly we're getting a (SPOILER ALERT) Jason Bourne storyline rip-off, with *one* minor twist of its own involving the memory plot device (END OF SPOILERS). 

Unknown certainly isn't a bad movie, but it's a bit of an inconsistent one. The first half is pretty darn boring as we establish the situation and then make very little progress, and then the second half is much more entertaining as the twists and turns begin to abound. It's definitely not the movie it's marketed to be, however. Unknown is an okay flick, but other movies of its nature have done it better. 

No comments:

Post a Comment