Unknown Directed by: Jaume Collet-Serra Starring: Liam Neeson, January Jones, Aiden Quinn Rating: NR Release Date: January 7, 2011
TRAILER SCORE: 4/10
MY THOUGHTS:
Liam Neeson was a revelation as a kick-ass Dirty Harry type character in Taken and it seems pretty clear that the filmmakers of Unknown are hoping that lightning will strike twice. But the premise looks kind of annoying. Neeson plays a respected doctor with a hot young wife (Jones) who on a trip to Germany gets in a cab accident followed by a coma that leads to him getting his identity stolen (I hate when that happens). Oh, wait, I forgot to mention that his identity is stolen by Aiden Quinn. Really? Like you'd confuse those two? And even his wife doesn't know who he is!!! Is he mad? Is there a vast conspiracy? (The Trailer pretty much makes clear it's the latter.)
The action looks decent, and Neeson looks like he's in top form but I just can't get excited about another stolen identity movie. Recently the TV show The Event pulled the same thing and I just lost interest. I'm tired of ridiculously vast conspiracies to take over people's identities in movies for no specific reason. Even when there is a reason, it doesn't seem to make up for the difficulty and expense of the conspirators are going through. That said, I like Neeson and Taken was pretty sweet. So it's not a total write off. But unless there's some mind bending reasoning behind the identity loss or the film is done much better than it looks, I doubt I'll see it in a theater.