Unknown 1.5 stars

If you want to see Liam Neeson in action done well, see watch Taken. Taken was well shot, well thought out, fast paced, gritty, and a huge thrill ride. Unknown tries to mimic these many ups from Taken, including casting Liam Neeson, but fails in every way, except for the man himself.


This film is poorly cast, where no one except for Neeson is a good fit as Martin Harris. Aidan Quinn has never really had a breakthrough in terms of his career, but he always has been a dependable actor from Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein to Legends of the Fall. In this film, he is way past his prime and tries to act out and beak out our main man to no avail. All of the money must have been spent for the horrible CG action scenes that could have been done better, and cheaper, practically; whereas that money could have been on getting a better actor for “Martin B” as he is called in the credits. Although he looks a lot like him, my mind is going straight to Ralph Fiennes for a better Martin B.

Then there is January Jones who plays his wife, Liz. She plays her role very unexpressive. This could have been potentially been a great role for her, to show people what to expect in her role for X-Men First Class. But I just don’t see her going much in the way of her career unless she steps up in a better way.

Next, we come to the other three major supporting roles, Diane Kruger, Bruno Ganz, and Frank Langella. Kruger is half way decent compared to the other main actors in this film. We actually like her, believe her, and think positive things about her. Ganz is the second best actor here in this movie next to Neeson. He plays a sort-of private detective hired to try and figure out who Martin Harris is. Then there is Frank Langella… Not that great is he. I’m not going to say much, but highlight this next sentence if you want major spoilers. (Mr. Nixon is behind it all!)

Now done with the acting, I think I need to say how terrible the plot is. The story is great and one or two of the twists were fun, but it was getting from Point A to Point B to Point C to Point D to Point E…you get the picture. It was long, drawn out and filled with holes. YOU CAN”T DEFIB A WET MAN PEOPLE! And when you run out of the shower, your hair will be wet. These things and much, much more are a few holes in the stinky cheese.

Even the action scenes are horribly shot. We see a shot of a coming car, three shots of Neeson and him changing the gear, two shots of seeing cars zooming, a shot of Kruger in the front, five shots of Neeson and his gears and I don’t need to go on. I was thinking “Please, enough with the gear shots, we know he is changing gears. Jason Bourne didn’t change gears this much. Let’s see more explosions and crashes.” Even the hand to hand combat scenes were too quick and choppy. We didn’t see much of the fun punching that we saw in the trailer.

I could go on even more about the plot holes, and choppy action scenes, and badly placed camera angles, and the acting, and (SPOILER ALERT AGAIN!) how a police and security force of a hotel could possibly miss a bomb that size in a building that a Prince who has almost been assassinated three times (NO MORE SPOILERS), but I won’t.

Bad movie all the way around. Terrible, flawfull (yes, I made up a new word), and so un-original, this movie is a don’t see if there ever once one. 2011 is getting to a bad start. Other than The Way Back, I can’t recommend any recently released theatrical films. Sorry.