ildsol The build-up is exciting: Someone has stolen the identity and life of the protagonist ... or is he, himself, going insane? Martin Harris (the ever reliable Liam Neeson) explains the struggle in his mind as: "a war between being told who you are and knowing who you are." The premise is followed by great action scenes and twists and turns to keep you guessing most of the way. A movie like this, however, ends well by keeping suspension of disbelief on a tight leash, for the viewer to really invest emotionally. The third act, unfortunately, looses the grip. Where genre classics like The Fugitive (1993) and The Game (1997) held the viewer fast to the heart-pounding end, Unknown Identity ends up increasingly far-fetched, and it eventually couldn't keep me truly caring about the story.6/10

zkonedog Well, Hollywood, you suckered me into another one. After the rousing success of "Taken", Liam Neeson returns to the same basic format in "Unknown". Unfortunately, the final product is far less thrilling and downright bad.For a basic plot summary, "Unknown" sees bio-scientist Martin Harris (Neeson) in Germany for a worldwide science convention. While oversees, Harris is involved in a traffic accident and gets banged around a bit. When he comes to, his memory is a bit scrambled and his entire identity is seemingly stolen.To put it bluntly, this film is bad in pretty much every aspect, but three really stand out:First off, Hollywood suckers us in by capitalizing on Neeson's "Taken" persona, only this time throwing in January Jones (of Mad Men fame) as eye candy. No new character ground is trod whatsoever.Second, the plot is almost a carbon-copy of the Jason Bourne series, only much less intriguing and reeking again of capitalizing on an already-done idea.Finally, and this is the truly sad part, this movie actually has a decent mystery revealed towards the end. However, the rest of the movie is so drab that you won't care about the "big reveal" when it does arrive.Basically, here is how I look at "Unknown": It tries to channel "Taken", instead rips off "Bourne", and ends up far too close to the dismal "Edge of Darkness". I'd maybe give it 1.5 stars, but I can't give it the benefit of the doubt for two stars.

juneebuggy Lots of twists and turns and some decent action scenes in what has come to be a familiar type of movie for Liam Neeson these days.Dr Martin Harris is in Berlin Germany when he is involved in a car accident, suffers a bump to the head and then awakens days later to find that nobody knows who he is including his wife. In fact another man is claiming to be the real Dr Harris. Ignored by disbelieving authorities and hunted by mysterious assassins, Harris finds himself on the run.This was almost really good, it just fell off the mark a bit somehow and I also have to mention how much it reminded me of Harrison Ford's "Frantic", its almost the same movie, right down to the roof top scramble out the window. Neeson does a decent job with his version though. I did find that almost all of his interactions with his "wife" January Jones felt forced and awkward but I think that's down to her, she was kinda terrible. Diane Kruger on the other hand was fantastic as the funky girl he finds himself on the run with.I really liked the twist at the end where suddenly everything that I had thought was far fetched or dumb made sense and even had the thought that it was actually a far smarter movie than I had realized. Maybe they should have revealed "that" a little earlier. 3/8/15

brchthethird UNKNOWN, another one of recent action star Liam Neeson's winter season offerings, is fairly entertaining, but also very implausible. Liam Neeson plays Martin Harris, a scientist who is attending a biotech conference in Berlin with his wife. Or is he? After an accident, he is left with no identification and no proof of who he is, and everyone is claiming they don't know him. He then proceeds to find out who he is. This type of mystery/thriller has been done before, although perhaps not as slickly as this one. The movie ERASED, starring Aaron Eckhart comes to mind, although that pales in comparison to this in terms of just about everything. Liam Neeson once again shows that he makes a capable, if unexpected, action star and he also has the acting chops to give it some weight. January Jones as his wife, however, is practically a non-entity. She practically sleepwalks through her limited role and doesn't really give off anything resembling human emotion, although that might have been on purpose. To accurately describe my reasoning would delve into spoiler territory, so I'll just leave it at that. Diane Kruger also gave a good performance as an immigrant taxi driver who helps out Liam Neeson's character. Aside from him, she's given the most screen time and is given a nice back story, to boot. Rounding out the cast are Bruno Ganz and Frank Langella. Although neither one of them had a lot of screen time (one might say they were underutilized), they did own the few scenes they were in. In terms of technical quality, the film was decent. There was a fair amount of hand-held camera-work, but none of it was too "shaky" and the fight scenes were comprehensible. There was even a couple good car chases. There was also some nice on-location shooting in Berlin, although the visual palette of the film didn't really bring out anything spectacular. Narrative-wise, the film is preposterous but still fun. There was a couple of moments where I laughed out loud due to how ridiculous things were, but overall I just accepted that the whole premise was far-fetched and went with it. Now, being mostly a dumb action movie, you wouldn't expect it to have much in the way of pertinent themes or sociopolitical commentary, but they did manage to shoehorn some in via Bruno Ganz's character, a former Stasi agent and a Saudi prince who is bankrolling a GMO project. Nothing too deep is said, but it was nice that they acknowledged that these things exist. As a whole, the movie is OK. It moves along at a good pace and is never boring. Still, discerning moviegoers would be justified in skipping it if they don't like this brand of action movie.