Release Date – 2/18/11
Martin Harris is in Berlin with his wife to attend a presentation given by one of his colleagues in the scientific studies of botany. After arriving at the hotel, he realizes he left a very important briefcase at the airport. While rushing back in a cab, he is involved in a serious car accident. He’s in a coma for four days and when he wakes up he has very little memory of what happened. When he traces his steps back to the hotel, his wife doesn’t recognize him and another man is claiming to be Martin Harris. He starts believing he might be crazy until men are sent to kill him. Now he has to evade them while putting the pieces together about why someone is taking over his life. It’s a movie that relies on a twist in the end. So no matter how much it might interest you, the twist is going to be the deciding factor on whether or not you like the movie. And it was… OK… I guess.
Liam Neeson is riding high after his critically acclaimed badass role in Taken. So this movie was marketed as a similar type. Neeson is shown as Martin Harris, kicking ass and taking names in the trailers but its really something completely different. Its more of a suspenseful, mystery movie instead of action packed. Neeson isn’t running around beating everyone up. He’s just a scientist. The whole time he is trying to find out why his wife (January Jones) wouldn’t remember him and also tracks down the cabbie (Diane Kruger) that was also in the accident. He’s just pooling information from any source while he runs away from bad guys. He never really puts any pieces together until the end. He never finds clues to help him out; he’s basically just told what is going on within the last 20 minutes. So there’s really no chance for the audience to take a stab at the final outcome.
Directors like M. Night Shyamalan get ripped because they constantly use the twist ending which is either going to generate love or hate when it comes down to expressing your feelings about the movie. But when you see other lesser known directors try to pull off the shock twist and you don’t have that love or hate feeling, you realize it does take some talent to produce a movie like that. Director of Unknown, Jaume Collet-Serra ,may not have an impressive resume with horror type movies House of Wax and Orphan being his only big name flicks but he does what he can with the script. Neeson is his usual self and Diane Kruger is pretty good. But again, the twist. It just wasn’t anything to write home about. The movie gets you really interested on what could be happening with a few ups and down to throw you for a loop. Then it all gets explained and you’re just like Oh Ok. Now just wrap it up.
IMDB – 7.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes – 56%
Movie Wiseguys – 6.5/10