Unknown - Review

We live in a troubling time where studios seem to be retreating further and further into safe territory at the expense of originality and actual enjoyment, cue another pointless Euro-thriller. Following very much in the slightly degrading footsteps of Taken, a wholesome American tourist (Neeson) visits scary evil Europe (where bad things are guaranteed to happen) and, after a car crash coma, must proceed to bust heads and have car chases to reclaim what is rightfully his; in this case his identity and his wife, played by Mad Men’s January Jones, who seems to have no recollection of him and has shacked up with an impostor doing a very convincing impression.

The plot attempts to justify itself with some half-arsed ironic tragedies, like he can’t prove he is who he says he is because he loses his passport at the airport and The US government would normally be all over the situation but it’s Thanksgiving weekend and the embassy’s closed. Thus there is no choice but to play the “let’s solve the mystery ourselves” game with Diane Kruger’s, thoroughly unconvincing, Bosnian cab driver coming along for the ride. The film supplants Taken’s Paris-centric plot with a romp around Berlin, sadly the production team point-blank refuse to use any of the wonderful sights in Berlin and instead fill the screen with generic side-streets that could be from anywhere. Opting to show the city blanketed in snow ordinarily would be a nice touch but instead seems to only emphasise the sluggishness of the narrative. Taken managed to justify its wholesome stupidity and racism by fuel-injecting itself with some brutally wonderful action, Unknown on the other hand is neither a puzzle-solver nor an action film - with about three action set-ups, the world’s most useless assassins and a plot-twist you’ll get halfway through if you’re smart enough. Save a little dynamite scene between veterans Frank Langella and Bruno Ganz, this is straight-to-DVD banality.

3/10

You’ll know it all too well.