Identity as Enigma

Imagine that you’re in a taxi in a foreign city with your spouse. Suddenly the taxi swerves to avoid an accident and you’re plunging off a bridge and into a river. When you wake up, you’re in a hospital and a doctor is telling you that you’ve been in a coma for four days. Your memory is patchy, but when the hospital asks the police, no one has been looking for you. When you do finally manage to find your spouse, she has no idea who you are and is, in fact, married to another man.

This is the whiz-bang set up for Unknown, director Jaume Collet-Serra’s  adaptation of Didier van Cauwelaert’s novel Out of My Head. Liam Neeson stars as Dr. Martin Harris, an accomplished botanist who arrives in Berlin with his beautiful wife Liz (January Jones) to give a presentation at an international convention of biochemists. Unfortunately, the aforementioned taxi crash intervenes and Martin finds himself in a position that no successful, handsome, wealthy man (or anyone, for that matter) would want to find himself in: no one knows who he is, everyone thinks he crazy, and only Martin has his own gumption left to prove that he’s not a mental patient.

Unfortunately, Collet-Serra and Warner Bros. decided to cast Neeson as Martin Harris and turn this semi-existential premise into a standard Hollywood set of plot points.

As hard as he tries, Mr. Neeson can’t muster more from his range than consternation or relief. You can almost feel him relaxing into the scenes where he’s not frantically declaring his identity, getting into vicious fistfights or navigating car chases. In fact, it’s when Neeson is just listening to his taxi driver, Gina (Diane Kruger) talk about her dreams of being an artist, or quietly telling his story to Jürgen (Bruno Ganz) that he’s at his best and we get to see some dimension in his acting. 

Personally, I believe that the best action heroes bring an entire palette of emotions to their character. Think about Mel Gibson in the first Lethal Weapon, or Matt Damon in the Bourne franchise. These men are complicated, tortured loners fighting for their women or their sense of reality. Unfortunately, Neeson’s action hero doesn’t deliver passion or smarts. He’s the guy you’d date, but wouldn’t marry.

Notable performances in the film come from Ganz, whose face and world- weariness just get more beautiful with age, and Frank Langella, whose brief appearance as Rodney Cole, an old friend of Martin’s, is a breath of great acting to match Ganz’s. January Jones’s Liz is the same character she plays in Mad Men, and she should be careful that her ice princess persona doesn’t pigeonhole her for life. Aidan Quinn, who plays Martin’s replacement, continues his comeback as an actor who does slimy better than anyone else (see The Eclipse).

Two Patches out of Five

“It was alright, I guess.” — Gus, Laguna Niguel

“I thought the car chases were cool. And Diane Kruger was hot.” — Chase, Mission Viejo

“I was disappointed. I thought the story was predictable. — Ruth, San Juan Capistrano