Unknown

Back in 2008, a movie starring Liam Neeson called Taken was released, and everybody kept comparing it to The Bourne Identity. It did follow some of the formula, the whole moving around foreign countries and lots of hand-to-hand combat with the occasional car-chase scene. It was a pretty good movie though, and really the same comparisons could be made to a lot of other action movies. It seems somebody got the wrong idea out of Taken’s success though, and figured they’d milk the Bourne formula with Neeson for all it’s worth.

At first glance, and for about the first half of the movie, Unknown seems more like an episode of The Twilight Zone. Instead of having amnesia, Liam appears to have been completely replaced by another man, taking his wife, his job, and even his scheduled speech at a bio-technology summit. He of course has no ID to confirm he is who he says he is, as it was conveniently lost. He almost gives in to the thought that he might be insane, but his memories are so vivid that he just can’t accept it. His suspicions are confirmed after a shady guy starts tailing and trying to kill him. After a bunch of chases, death and almost-romance, we finally get to the reveal. I am going to spoil this so if you’re actually planning on going to see the movie you should skip the next paragraph.

Turns out he’s an assassin. This is revealed to him with almost the exact same dialogue as in Bourne Identity. The guy who’s taken his life was his backup, and his wife is actually his partner in the whole plot, so she’s in on it. He soon starts remembering who he actually is, but seemingly doesn’t become the same man again, instead deciding to take down the very mission he had been heading up until his accident. There isn’t really much reason given for this turn of conscience, whereas in Bourne it was rather plainly and emotionally explained. It just made me angry really.

Aside from all the second-rate mimicry, it’s just not that great of a movie. January Jones is of course gorgeous, but her acting here is pretty robotic, not giving me much hope for X-Men: First Class. Neeson himself is just himself, his deep and manly voice just not conveying the emotion I would be expecting in his situation. Diane Kruger is okay as a facsimile of Franka Potente’s character from Bourne Identity, but much like Mila Kunis in The Book of Eli, she latches onto Liam’s character rather quickly and strongly without any really convincing reason. There were lots of Hollywood-style car explosions that wouldn’t actually happen, a little bit of shoddy CGI, and lots of those up-close shaky-cam fight scenes that have been plaguing action movies for a number of years now.

Most of the reviews I’ve read for this so far have been more forgiving than I am. Even as I was walking from the theater discussing it with my friend, I said it was “an okay movie.” As I’m writing this though I can’t help but think of it as a failure.