Dull and Disappointing

Rating: 2/10 (21 February 2011)

MAJOR SPOILER
A good "why is this happening to me" thriller, like North By Northwest or Frantic, is Kafka with a happy ending. A hero the audience can identify with gets caught up by mistake in a conspiracy he can't understand, but he ultimately figures it out, overcomes it, and gets his life back (along with the girl). Unknown doesn't work because the the normal life "Martin Fletcher" has been struggling to get back to is an illusion. He's not a guy like us or an innocent victim. He's killer scum, just one of the villains suffering from traumatic amnesia, who has become a loose end the conspiracy has to tidy up. The "wife" he thinks he loves is just one of the conspirators. Once we find that out, who cares about the McGuffin? Fletcher's efforts in the last third of the film to thwart the conspiracy are partly just petulance at his employer and partly the lingering effect of his delusion.
And there's a fundamental problem with the conspirators' diabolical plan to kill a scientist while making it look like collateral damage from the assassination of someone else. Prominent scientists in the same field may not know each other personally, but they know each other's work and reputation. "Martin Fletcher" couldn't just suddenly appear a year ago as the kind of professional colleague that the target victim would know and deal with.
Neeson does the best he can with this material. January Jones is a block of wood, and I suspect that much of her performance wound up in the trim barrel because she couldn't carry off her character's more forceful aspects. There are many egregious lapses in logic and continuity, starting with the fact that the US Embassy would have a duty officer available over the Thanksgiving weekend and ending with the seamless insertion of Diane Kruger's picture into Jones's fake Canadian passport at the end. The only redeeming feature is Bruno Ganz, and his scene with Langella is a bizarre bit of nostalgia for the supposed chivalry of Cold War spies.
Not even worth Netflix.