Relentless, nerve-wracking, gripping

Rating: Null/10 (24 August 2011)

Liam Neeson does not understand why his wife (January Jones, on vacation from MAD MEN) pretends she does not know him, or why everyone is being so nasty to him, but he is mostly peeved that someone else has stolen his identity and is posing as him with his own wife! That is enough to annoy anyone. January Jones is as icy as in the latter episodes of MAD MEN, and one would not want to mess with her. Neeson has lost much of his memory as a result of bumping his head when the taxi he was in went off a bridge and into a river. He keeps trying to tell people that he is Dr. Martin Harris, a scientist. We already know this because that's who he was at the beginning of the film. However, he has lost his passport and all his personal papers, and cannot prove his identity. Then people want to kill him, so he is on the run. He finds the young woman who had been driving the taxi when it went off the bridge, an illegal immigrant (they are in Berlin, capital of the Fourth Reich, of which Greece, Ireland and Portugal have now become colonies, as you may have noticed), but she is wary of being exposed and he has to chase her. She is excellently played by Diane Kruger, with nervous intensity. A German nurse who tries to help Neeson is murdered by some vicious hit-men. But before she died she gave Neeson the name and address of a man who might help him, saying that 'he is an expert at finding people'. This man, played by a somewhat aged Bruno Ganz ('ganz' means 'entire', and Ganz has always been entirely a star), turns out to be a former Stasi officer. He helps Neeson but ends up having to take a cyanide pill when about to be tortured by an emissary from America's 'Section 15', an assassination bureau. Is a Saudi prince about to be blown up by a bomb? Is a new breed of corn resistant to disease about to be announced at the conference which is going to ruin the future of Monsanto? (Monsanto is not named, or there would be more than Section 15 on the rampage.) And then there is 'the other Dr. Martin Harris', menacingly played by Aidan Quinn, who is now living with Neeson's wife in the very suite, the Eisenhower Suite, in the Hotel Adlon where Neeson was supposed to be. How dare he pretend to be Neeson, as he simply does not have the profile for it (and who else does have that profile?). One of the most menacing of all the performances is by Frank Langella as Rodney Cole. There is plenty of intrigue here for everyone. The action is fast but not so fast you can't keep up. That is, if you have the stamina and can take it, as this film is extraordinarily harrowing. It is a first-rate bone-shaking thriller, and not to be seen when you are on your own or suffering from any form of identity crisis. The film was directed by the Spaniard, Jaume Collet-Serra, who directed ORPHAN (2009).