Now Playing: Unknown

Out of the blue my friends called me up to go see Liam Neeson's new film Unknown. I had been hearing plenty of mixed reviews regarding this one, but I also remember liking the trailer for it, so I decided to go and see for myself. This of course results in a bonus movie for today, and subtracting a movie from my list of potential daily movies. Oh well, there's plenty of other movies left in the world. My friend's of course love this scenario though, as they see it as having wasted a movie for me. Thanks guys.

Anyways, the basic premise is that Liam Neeson gets in a car accident, hitting his head, and when he returns to his wife, she claims not to know him, and it seems another man has replaced him. Hit the jump to see if this story about identity theft is worth seeing on the big screen.

I had heard many comparisons between this and Liam Neeson's other movie Taken. Story wise, I didn't see any similarities. The only things the same is that they both star Liam Neeson and they're in a European country. If that's all it takes for people to say these are the same movies, I think movie audiences need to pay attention a little more.

The acting in this movie is quite good, although the characters themselves aren't all particularly deep. Neeson plays a confused and possibly going insane Dr. Martin Harris, which he does very well and was easily the best in the film. Gina, the taxi cab driver who saves him after the crash, and who he later returns to for help is played by Diane Kruger, who I also thought did a good job. The last cast member I'd like to bring up in a positive light is Bruno Ganz who plays a detective that Dr. Harris goes to. I'm not sure if I've seen him in anything else before, but he had a familiar look to him and I really liked him. The downfall of the movie for me was with January Jones who plays Mrs. Harris. I'm not sure what it is, but I just always have a hard time buying into her performances. It didn't help that her character was fairly one-note and completely lacking any depth. We'll see her later in the year as Emma Frost in the new X-Men movie coming out soon, of which I'm not looking forward to her performance.

Gina and Martin try to figure out what comes next

As a mystery and a thriller it did a pretty good job. Gina and Martin end up on the run from strange men who seem to be after them. Unfortunately I actually figured out the whole story, including the ending about halfway through the movie, if not before. I'm not sure if this is common for others, or if I just got lucky this time around. Needless to say it made the whole film fairly predictable for me.

The action and car chases were quite good, although there is sometimes a heavy reliance on "shaky cam" in a few scenes. A foot chase through a hospital comes to mind as especially annoying to me, as it went on for far too long and was completely disorienting.

I don't really think this is a must see movie. It's ok, but certainly not on the same level in quality as Taken (since that's the movie everyone keeps bringing up in comparison). It's not bad though. Maybe wait for it to come out on dvd.