*1/2 out of ****
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
Starring: Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, January Jones, Bruno Ganz and Frank Langella
Running time: 113 minutes
There reaches a point in many lauded actors’ careers when they stop taking meaty, dramatic parts and opt for roles outside of their comfort zone. A good example of this is Liam Neeson, who seemed to be having a successful shift from heavier fare to genre pictures in recent years.
But, the hot-blooded fervor he brought to 2009’s Taken and the crackling charisma he showed off in The A-Team last year has been erased into cold, robotic monotony in his latest star vehicle, a trite and frustratingly standard thriller with an equally generic title: Unknown.
Neeson is the blandly named Dr. Martin Harris, who flies into Berlin with his wife, Liz (the stony January Jones, from AMC’s Mad Men) to give a speech at a biotechnology conference. When he mistakenly leaves his briefcase at the airport, he hails a taxi to retrieve it. But, before it can reach their destination, the taxi swerves to avoid an oncoming accident and ends up smashing through a wall and falling into a river.
Harris wakes up from a coma a few days later to find that his memory is hazy. He heads back to his hotel, but finds that another man (Aidan Quinn) claims to be him. To add to his chagrin, Liz doesn’t recognize him either.
He ends up trying to piece together this unwelcome bout of mistaken identity with the help of a former Stasi officer (Bruno Ganz) and the cabbie who he saw three days earlier and fled from the scene (Diane Kruger). This means one thing… time to cue up the Hitchcock homages.
The sad part is that it isn’t only Liam Neeson who seems to be in a bewildered state throughout – his line readings are often botched in a kind of emotional paralysis – but the script suffers from its own identity crisis.
When the twist ending is finally unveiled, Harris later behaves in a way that is exactly the opposite of what we have come to expect from the big reveal. This destroys the legitimacy of the twist while evaporating any sense of credibility the story had to begin with. What a pity.
Even beforehand, Unknown moves through the motions of the thriller genre without throwing anything fresh or unexpected at the audience.
At the times when it doesn’t borrow from superior thrillers, such as The Bourne Identity and Frantic, it fails to enhance its dim protagonist or offer a nice variety of red herrings to engage the audience. Without a compelling lead to follow or an intriguing mystery to keep us guessing, the film becomes rather suspense-less.
Interestingly, one of the film’s writers, Stephen Cornwell, is the son of suspense novelist John Le Carre. You'd think his genes alone would give us something unique, but this isn’t the case.
Story quibbles aside, Unknown is perfectly watchable for about an hour due to assured direction by Jaume Collet-Serra (who last helmed the horror flick, Orphan). He doesn’t submit to the shaky-camera mayhem in the action set-pieces, which are often thrilling. Collet-Serra also nicely applies a drab, muted visual palette for the city of Berlin, while bright green and yellow blends are used for the serene flashback sequences.
Unfortunately, his often enthralling direction does little to mar an uninspired script that keeps a riveting ensemble – which also includes the wonderful Frank Langella in a thankless role – frustratingly limited. Nary a strong emotion appears in Neeson’s voice or on his face throughout. This is the same Liam Neeson that portrayed Alfred Kinsey and Oscar Schindler to perfection. I mean, it is him… right?
No comments:
Post a Comment