Fun for what it is

Rating: 7/10 (19 February 2011)

At the time that I am writing this, this movie has 72.7% 10/10 out of 687 votes. Together with a trailer that looked to me like it could be more than just a joyride, I expected that this would be a more meaningful movie starring Liam Neeson and not another "Taken". Unfortunately for me, that expectation was wrong.
If you go in expecting a nice ride with a couple of twists somewhat similar to "Taken", you'll get what you want. But if you expect more... no such luck. How the story is wrapped up is pure cliché and the movie even includes that seemingly never-ending car chase that had at least me yawning. It would have been great if "Unknown" would have actually dealt more in-depth with the terror of memory loss and identity theft and other possible developments I will not go into because I don't want to spoil anything. There are some interesting twists in the movie but they're of the mainstream kind, not the thoughtful one.
Being a native German speaker, what was very impressive to me about this movie was how the creators did not shy away from plastering "Unknown" with German details. A decent amount of subtitles, a huge amount of papers/signs/etc. in German on screen throughout the movie - this definitely does not feel like it could have been filmed anywhere else. Although thanks to CG it may well have been. Still, basically every scene reminds you that you're not in that average-city that so many movies seem to play in.
Overall, an impressively done film that is simply lacking substance and there were one or two visual effects that looked inadequate for a production of this category. As I argued in the beginning - it is all about what you expect/want from "Unknown".