the fresh films reviews

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Unknown (2011)

Director:
Jaume Collet-Serra
COUNTRY
Germany/USA
GENRE
Crime/Drama/Thriller
NORWEGIAN TITLE
Ukjent ID
RUNNING TIME
113 minutes
Producer:
Joel Silver
Leonard Goldberg
Andrew Rona
Screenwriter:
Oliver Butcher
Stephen Cornwell


Cast includes:

CHARACTER ACTOR/ACTRESS RATING
Dr. Martin Harris Liam Neeson ½
Gina Diane Kruger ½
Liz Harris January Jones
Martin B. Aidan Quinn
Professor Rodney Cole Frank Langella ½
Ernst Jürgen Bruno Ganz
Professor Bressler Sebastian Koch ½

 

Review

Memento meets The Fugitive as Liam Neeson finds himself in all sorts of trouble after arriving in Berlin with his wife to attend a conference. First, his taxi crashes, leaving him with a conventional plot convenient amnesia, and then his wife disowns him when he tries to prove that he is who he claims to be. For the next hour and a half, we must roam the streets of Berlin with him trying to solve the puzzle. Although there is undeniable familiarity in the setup, not to mention the paranoid atmosphere director Collet-Serra tries to conjure, the script is quite ingenious within the set premises, and it holds up well even if the filmmakers try their best to distract us from it through numerous uninspired and dragged-out action sequences and car chases which curb rather than intensify the useful level of suspense the film is able to build up. As such, Collet-Serra's work here is more mechanic and less elegant then in his previous film, the chiller Orphan (2009), but through a committed lead performance by Neeson and industrious storytelling, Unknown still makes for an entertaining watch with a couple of interesting segments, notably one between the two veterans Frank Langella and Bruno Ganz.

Copyright © 21.5.2011 Fredrik Gunerius Fevang

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