It’s being touted as the fraternal twin of Liam Neeson’s pulpy action flick Taken, but Unknown falls short of the guilty pleasure of the former, mainly due to the constraints of its premise. Whereas Taken allowed Neeson to play the avenging badass and unleash all sorts of fury on some deserving villains for the better part of 90 minutes, Unknown sees him on the run in a more vulnerable role.
The gruff actor plays Dr. Martin Harris, a scientist visiting Berlin for a biotechnology conference. In less time than it takes to say “sinister conspiracy” a car accident leaves him comatose for four days. He awakes with a spotty memory and quickly discovers that his wife (January Jones) claims that she doesn’t know him and that another man (Aidan Quinn) is her husband and the real Martin Harris.
Understandably perturbed, Harris sets out to determine if he’s insane or just being jerked around, seeking help from the cabbie who saved his life — an illegal immigrant from Bosnia (Diane Kruger) — and a retired former agent of the East German secret police (Bruno Ganz).
It starts off strong enough, with just enough intrigue to pull the viewer into the story. It quickly becomes familiar and routine, however, relying too much on convention. The prerequisite car chases and fight scenes are by the numbers but pack enough cheap visceral thrills to keep things moving. Most viewers will guess the twist early on, and once it is revealed (POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT) it feels like Total Recall meets The Bourne Identity. (It’s still better than Salt, though.)
Perhaps its biggest hindrance is that the antagonists fail to engage us — a fatal flaw for a screen villain. The henchman are stock assassin-types, Quinn has little to do in a thankless role, and Frank Langella is sadly underused but, along with Ganz, manages to steal the show in a single scene that oozes with old-fashioned Cold War-era spy thriller intensity.
