UNKNOWN (2011)
Starring Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, January Jones, Aidan Quinn, Bruno Ganz, Frank Langella, Sebastian Koch, Mido Hamada, Karl Markovics, Stipe Erceg, Olivier Schneider, Clint Dyer, Eva Löbau, Helen Wiebensohn and Rainer Bock.
Screenplay by Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cornwell.
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra.
Distributed by Warner Bros. 113 minutes. Rated PG-13.
If Unknown seems a little familiar, it may just be because it is the second time in two years in which a Liam Neeson movie seems to be loosely based on Roman Polanski’s 1993 thriller Frantic with Harrison Ford. In that film, Ford was an American doctor visiting Paris with his wife when she disappears – apparently the victim of a kidnap plot. Therefore he must stalk the Paris underworld in search of her, stumbling on a huge conspiracy as he does.
The previous Neeson film, the surprise 2009 hit Taken, amped up the action a bit, but it essentially had the same plotline – Neeson is an aging former government agent stalking the Paris underworld to try to find his kidnapped daughter.
Unknown changes the European city – it’s now Berlin – and goes back to the wife being the focus of the story. It also returns to the character being a doctor speaking at a seminar. These are just a few of the ways the stories are similar. Granted, this time the wife is not kidnapped, but it is one of those huge, complex, nearly impossible to pull off conspiracies where after he gets partial amnesia in a car crash, his wife insists that he is not her husband. Then Neeson must stalk the Berlin underworld to find out who he is and why his wife denies knowing him.
So it’s not the most original storyline, but as a fast-paced action picture, Unknown actually does work quite well. It is a bit familiar, but still undeniably entertaining.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2011 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: June 21, 2011.
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