UNKNOWN - ***

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. Starring Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, Frank Langella, January Jones, Aidan Quinn, Bruno Ganz. Genre : Thriller. USA 2011 113 mins Certificate : 15

Release Date : Out Now.

From Dark Castle Pictures and the director of the impressive ORPHAN, this is an admirable attempt at a twisting conspiratorial Hitchcockian thriller. In the wake of the huge commercial success of the lovably silly TAKEN, it also affords various opportunities for Liam Neeson to rough up random foreigners in order to appease the punters.

In wintry Berlin, where refreshingly the clubs still play the 350th remix of New Order’s “Blue Monday”, biotechnologist Neeson fails to make the bio-tech summit he’s in town for. Briefly separated from trophy wife January Jones as she checks into their hotel, he ends up in a taxi driven by Diane Kruger, which plummets off a bridge and puts him in a four day coma having died for a few minutes at the scene. Attempting to put together the pieces of what has happened, he finds that his wife no longer knows him, a stranger (Aidan Quinn) is claiming to be him and all his memories of professional and personal relationships appear false. His doctor suggests the complete loss of identity to be merely part of Neeson’s post-accident condition, but our hero suspects more cleverly sinister forces are at work.

As with last year’s underrated AFTERLIFE, Neeson’s strikingly haunted features are perfect for a role involving a shifting of audience sympathies as ambiguity grows about his true nature prior to being plunged into a very modern nightmare. His character forms part of a feature-length extension of the creepy notion of ringing your own phone only for someone else to answer it and claim to be you (unforgettably used within the elaborate mind-fuck of LOST HIGHWAY).

The movie itself nicely evokes the paranoid awkwardness of being a stranger in an unfamiliar city while touching on contemporary fears of total identity theft and hospital dangers (a la Larry Cohen’s THE AMBULANCE). The bleakly shot backdrop enhances the sense of Neeson’s total isolation from everybody and everything.

It’s spiced up with excellent car chases, exciting bursts of action and a very interesting cast, with small but important roles for the likes of Bruno Ganz and Frank Langella. A shame, then, that UNKNOWN meanders in the midsection and the considerable intrigue built in the first hour peters out when the narrative (already borrowing from FRANTIC and SHATTERED, to name but two) turns into an elaborate variation on the central conceit of THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT. A far too tidy Hollywood ending also dents the movie’s credibility: if this had been made in 1974 it would have starred Gene Hackman and ended on a fashionably sour note, sending its audience home with the knowledge that we’re all doomed, one way or another.

Steven West

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