Unknown is another review I just want to dump somewhere mostly because it’s even worse than I Am Number Four in the unoriginal department and the film largely evaporated before my eyes as I was watching it. There is one decent twist towards the end that is pretty interesting…but then the movie promptly goes back to being a standard thriller that doesn’t excite much. In three months it will be hard for anyone who actually saw Unknown to remember that they saw it. They may not remember it much now.
What Works: Frank Langella shows up towards the end of the movie and energizes it for a few scenes, shaking the cobwebs off the staleness with an intriguing menace. And around that same time he brings the only other thing that works in Unknown with him: a twist that I actually didn’t see coming but doesn’t strain realism too much to believe.
What Doesn’t Work: From the non-descript title to the ultra generic hit man villain—not even given a name—that chases Liam Neeson for most of the movie, this movie just feels like a standard thriller you’d be better off watching (if you do at all and I’m not recommending it) on the USA network after ten on a night you can’t sleep.
What I Would Have Done Different: It’s hard to really explain this without giving the twist away, so I’ll just say I would have moved the twist up to the middle of the movie and changed genres earlier into what the movie becomes. For too much of the movie, his character is given not much to do, no inner life to draw from (he’s an amnesiac), and it’s hard to invest in a character that isn’t really a character. Also, January Jones sleep walks through a supporting role that should have had a hidden menace under every scene instead of the absolute blankness it does contain. The movie could have been a Hitchcock thriller but it plays it too straight for the first 2 thirds.
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