A solid and entertaining thriller

Rating: 8/10 (23 May 2017)

'Unknown' is about a man named Dr Martin Harris who's on a trip to Berlin for a conference with his wife Elizabeth. When they arrive at their hotel he notices there's a mix-up over a missing case and while travelling back to the airport he's involved in a terrible car accident. When he comes out of the resulting 4 day coma, he has lost fragments of his memory but remembers who he is, is definite of his identity, but when he reunites with his wife she claims not to know him or recognise him in any way and after a heated confrontation she introduces a man she insists is Dr Martin Harris (played by Aidan Quinn), and he even has identification, and photos with Elizabeth, to prove it. Now with everything to do with what he thought was his life seemingly replaced with something, or someone else, and stuck in Berlin without identification papers, it's a race to discover what is going on and for him to get his life back. It's a solid thriller, and has some really good moments and the director does keep the action moving along at a good pace. Liam Neeson is really good, as is Diane Kruger who plays Gina, the taxi driver who was also involved in the accident and is the only one Neeson can rely on for help. There are some good action scenes and a great car chase and the eventual twist at the end of the film is cleverly done too. I will say, I didn't think January Jones, who played Elizabeth, did a very good job in this film, her performance is pretty weak. Also, this film does have a couple of slow parts in the middle, and a couple of extra characters that I didn't feel were particularly necessary either, and there were times while watching this I was reminded of the movie "Frantic", in which Harrison Ford played a doctor attending a convention in Paris with his wife. In that movie, the wrong briefcase was picked up at the airport, Ford stepped into the hotel shower, and when he stepped out, he found his wife had vanished. Apart from that comparison, 'Unknown' is a fun and entertaining film. In my opinion it's not as good as 'Taken', but Liam Neeson does make it much better than it could have been.