Turn your brain off and you should enjoy it

Rating: 7/10 (14 November 2014)

UNKNOWN, another one of recent action star Liam Neeson's winter season offerings, is fairly entertaining, but also very implausible. Liam Neeson plays Martin Harris, a scientist who is attending a biotech conference in Berlin with his wife. Or is he? After an accident, he is left with no identification and no proof of who he is, and everyone is claiming they don't know him. He then proceeds to find out who he is. This type of mystery/thriller has been done before, although perhaps not as slickly as this one. The movie ERASED, starring Aaron Eckhart comes to mind, although that pales in comparison to this in terms of just about everything. Liam Neeson once again shows that he makes a capable, if unexpected, action star and he also has the acting chops to give it some weight. January Jones as his wife, however, is practically a non-entity. She practically sleepwalks through her limited role and doesn't really give off anything resembling human emotion, although that might have been on purpose. To accurately describe my reasoning would delve into spoiler territory, so I'll just leave it at that. Diane Kruger also gave a good performance as an immigrant taxi driver who helps out Liam Neeson's character. Aside from him, she's given the most screen time and is given a nice back story, to boot. Rounding out the cast are Bruno Ganz and Frank Langella. Although neither one of them had a lot of screen time (one might say they were underutilized), they did own the few scenes they were in. In terms of technical quality, the film was decent. There was a fair amount of hand-held camera-work, but none of it was too "shaky" and the fight scenes were comprehensible. There was even a couple good car chases. There was also some nice on-location shooting in Berlin, although the visual palette of the film didn't really bring out anything spectacular. Narrative-wise, the film is preposterous but still fun. There was a couple of moments where I laughed out loud due to how ridiculous things were, but overall I just accepted that the whole premise was far-fetched and went with it. Now, being mostly a dumb action movie, you wouldn't expect it to have much in the way of pertinent themes or sociopolitical commentary, but they did manage to shoehorn some in via Bruno Ganz's character, a former Stasi agent and a Saudi prince who is bankrolling a GMO project. Nothing too deep is said, but it was nice that they acknowledged that these things exist. As a whole, the movie is OK. It moves along at a good pace and is never boring. Still, discerning moviegoers would be justified in skipping it if they don't like this brand of action movie.