Unknown (2011)
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra
A man awakens from a coma, only to discover that someone has taken on his identity and that no one, (not even his wife), believes him. With the help of a young woman, he sets out to prove who he is.
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28 films that influenced Unknown
What critics say influenced Unknown
Still, in aspiring to match the thrillers of Frankenheimer and Hitchcock (and Polanski’s Hitchcock homage Frantic), Unknown mostly lacks the grindhouse energy fans of Taken might come expecting; they may find the picture a little too tasteful in the hands of director Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan) and as adapted by Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cornwell from Didier Van Cauwelaert’s novel (a.k.a.
I was reminded of Roman Polanski's " Frantic " (1988), in which Harrison Ford played a doctor attending a convention in Paris with his wife.
For those of you who missed Roman Polanski's under-appreciated 1988 Harrison Ford thriller, "Frantic", do yourselves a favor and rent (or stream) it from Netflix rather than running out to see "Unknown", the latest version of the American-caught-in-a-foreign-city formula.
And, perhaps, we're walking in the footsteps of Roman Polanski and his 1988 thriller Frantic -- also about an American on business in a European city (Harrison Ford), who finds himself in the centre of a conspiracy.
2. Ford's a good analogy, because Neeson's new film "Unknown" is basically a worse, more ludicrous, glossed-up version of Ford's "Frantic," directed by Roman Polanski in 1988.
There are times, in both its tenor and its plotlines, when Unknown may be remindful of The Bourne Identity - another case of fuzzy memory, with a European actress as the cash-strapped hipster who becomes an accidental partner in the hero's search for himself.
I am sure that screenwriters Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cornwell, working from a novel by Didier Van Cauwelaert, thought they were making “Hitchcock Does The Bourne Identity,” but I’m not sure that’s what Collet-Serra was making.
The film starts as a Hitchcockian thriller with a mystery at the heart of it, but becomes more and more like " The Bourne Identity " the longer it goes on, what with the European setting, the amnesia and more.
It was the latter film, a less-than-stellar knockoff of The Bourne Identity, which made me sit in the movie theater and ponder how Neeson’s skills have been less than challenged the last few years.
Part The Bourne Identity, part The Fugitive, Unknown is the latest example of this phenomenon, a passable, old-fashioned thriller that simmers with Hitchcockian aspirations and leftover Cold War intrigue.
— The Bourne Identity should get its own category, not only because of the ruthless efficiency of its action sequences but also for the detached competence of its star, Matt Damon, whose deportment while stalking the gray, shadowy streets of West Europe suggested a man on a mission while lost in a dream.
The title may or may not refer to Donald Rumsfeld's known unknowns and unknown unknowns, but for seasoned movie-goers this violent, fast-moving, neo-film noir is a well-known unknown in a tradition that includes Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes , Polanski's Frantic , the Jason Bourne trilogy and any number of amnesia thrillers.
Both “What Lies Beneath” and “The Fugitive” are echoed as “Unknown” beats up on Neeson while he tries to clear his name.
Richard Kimble in “The Fugitive.”)
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Not since “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,” has Berlin looked so cold and sinister.
"Unknown" sort of reminds of a reverse version of 1997's expert thriller "Breakdown," starring Kurt Russell as a man whose wife disappears without a trace when their car breaks down in the desert and she catches a ride to a nearby gas station with a good-samaritan truck driver.
Both “What Lies Beneath” and “The Fugitive” are echoed as “Unknown” beats up on Neeson while he tries to clear his name.
He’s softer and more rueful, and even if you weren’t on-team for Schindler’s List, the palpable romantic confusion that Neeson brought to a project like Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives is impressive.
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…think “Torn Curtain” ? with today’s bumper crop of high-tech espionage thrillers.
Imagine Ronin (1995) welded to The Fugitive (1993), but without the tough unsentimentality of Frankenheimer’s film or the wit and conscience of the Ford movie.