Fri 11 Mar 2016
UNKNOWN. Dark Castle/Warner Brothers. Liam Neeson (Dr. Martin Harris), January Jones (Elizabeth Harris), Diane Kruger, Aidan Quinn, Bruno Ganz, Frank Langella, Sebastian Koch. Screenplay: Oliver Butcher & Stephen Cornwell, based on the book Out of My Head by Didier Van Cauwelaert.
Where to begin? I think I’ll start by saying that this film will remind long-time readers of John Dickson Carr of that author’s tremendous gift of sheer story-telling mystery and suspense, while lovers of Cornell Woolrich will be captured at once by the utter audacity of piling on on coincidence after coincidence, pulling the utterly stunned protagonist deeper and deeper into a nightmarish predicament from which he can find no escape — and have the reader (or as in this case, the viewer) believe every minute of it.
I don’t believe in reviews that tell too much of the story ahead of time — I started watching this one with no idea of what it was about, only that Liam Neeson was in it, nothing more — and if that’s you as well, you can stop reading now and let that first paragraph tell you all you need to know.
But in case you’d care to read on, please do. I’ll do my best not to to spill any beans you’d rather have left in the pot. A certain Dr. and Mrs. Harris have just arrived in Berlin for a biotechnology conference, where he is to be a prominent participant. At the hotel while she is checking in, he discovers that he has accidentally left a small case at the airport. He grabs a cab without telling her where he is going, but once en route he finds that there is no cell phone service to reach her to tell her where he has gone. On the way to airport an accident on the road flips the cab into the river.
When he wakes up, he’s in a hospital. He was saved by the quick actions of the young blonde girl taxi driver (Diane Kruger), who then disappeared. The doctor tells him he may have memory problems for a while. What Dr. Harris doesn’t count on is that when he returns to the hotel, not only does his wife not recognize him, but there is a new Dr. Harris with her. After a short confrontation, with the hotel manager watching, the two of them dismiss him with considerable puzzlement and head off to enjoy their stay in Berlin and the conference together.
There are some pieces of what I said that may have already set off some alarm bells in your head. Of course I don’t know what you’re thinking, but the odds are that you may easily be onto something. On the other hand, you may not. You will have to watch the movie to find out — and not only is it a puzzler of first magnitude, there is also enough car chases and other action in it, explosions and so forth, to make you wonder how on earth they managed to get it down on film.
Have I convinced you or not? The movie has gotten somewhat mixed reviews — mostly favorable, I hasten to add — but if you were to ask me, I’d have to tell you that this is a movie that’s well worth your time. Even more than that, I thought it was terrific.
March 11th, 2016 at 9:45 pm
Sold.
March 11th, 2016 at 10:59 pm
Wow, did we see the same film? I thought this was terrible, sub-sub-Hitchcockian dreck.
March 11th, 2016 at 11:12 pm
Well, I did say that reviews were mixed.
March 12th, 2016 at 9:37 am
I wouldn’t rave as much as Steve – I found it not believable – but it certainly kept me watching. They should have known Liam wasn’t someone to mess with!
March 12th, 2016 at 2:43 pm
It’s enjoyable, and like you I appreciated that for once I didn’t know exactly how it would end five minutes after they established the puzzle. I did make a good guess, but I was by no means certain which was a good thing for once.
I’m not quite as enthusiastic, but almost. Neeson probably does this sort of film as well or better than anyone, and I am only sorry he says he won’t be doing anymore thrillers of this sort.
Sub Hitchcock, well, everything in this genre is pretty much sub Hitchcock, but this is a respectable attempt. My only regret is that rather than make a suspense film they stuck with the car chases and action elements — not that they aren’t exciting, but I think they could have done a more or less straight suspense film here and had a slightly better and more interesting film.
March 12th, 2016 at 10:02 pm
I’m not immune to the pleasures of this sort of thing, and I like many sub-Hitchcockian films, but this just didn’t measure up for me. It is easy to set up an intriguing situation that the first half of a film can coast on, but there can be a distinct let-down when lame explanations usher you out of the theater. Two much earlier (1965) films come to mind – “Mirage” and “Bunny Lake Is Missing”. Both had great set-ups and weak denouements.
March 13th, 2016 at 11:34 am
Patrick’s point is well taken. A sub-Hitchcockian film that did not let down, in my opinion, Charade.
March 13th, 2016 at 2:23 pm
Barry and Patrick,
Agreed on sub Hitchcock, and Barry, especially on CHARADE, which may be the best attempt to do the kind of lighter suspense film ala NORTH BY NORTHWEST or TO CATCH A THIEF ever made though there are a few British and French films like THE CLOUDED YELLOW and CONFIDENTIALLY YOURS I would put in the running.
Although the set up here is Hitchcockian or even Woolrichian, I only briefly felt they were going for a Hitchcockian thing as it went to action film fairly quickly. I don’t know if audiences today would sit still in a theater for a true Hitchcockian film where tension derives from character as much as incident. The French still make those sort of films, but most American films that try either miss the point or veer into action films as this does.
I liked this one on the level where Steve discusses it and enjoyed it though. I didn’t really expect much more than a brief Hitchcock vibe or for it to delve very deeply into the Woolrichian atmosphere of despair and the overwhelming weight of the hand of fate oppressing us. I knew going in it was going to veer toward a modern chase and pursuit film with more puzzle than usual, and on that level it worked as a pleasant diversion that could have been more but never really aspired to.
It falls into a category where I enjoyed the movie they made enough as a brief diversion, but they could have made a much better movie with the story and cast.