Confusion, mistaken identities, and Liam Neeson: what’s not to love?
A twist in the plot of a movie is like a magician’s final act: it’s never mentioned until the very end, and it defines the entire performance, good or bad.
There are an alarming number of movies that use a plot twist as a selling point. The Saw series, though they are a guilty pleasure of mine, are chief among the offenders. When a sudden plot twist is advertised, or is the focal point of a movie, it is an almost sure sign that the film has nothing worthwhile to stand on besides a hastily constructed twist. A truly effective plot twist is coincidental to the climax, and either comes completely out of left field, or leads the viewer down the wrong path completely. Movies like Fight Club, Lucky Number Slevin, Citizen Kane, and Psycho are masters of the suspenseful twist, but there are very few modern movies that can adequately pull it off. Director Jaume Collet-Serra’s new thriller Unknown, however, passes the test with flying colors.
Unknown is the definition of a successful thriller, able to keep the viewers on the edge of their seats until the last credits roll. With Liam Neeson (The A-Team) as protagonist Dr. Martin Harris, I was sure I was going to enjoy the film. I was worried that it would be too similar to Neeson’s earlier butt-kicking escapade Taken (Pierre Morel, 2008), but I was satisfied to find that it was not. Taken is a great movie, full of anxiety and adrenaline, but there are only so many bad guys Neeson can take down before it gets a little stale. Unlike Taken, Unknown focuses more on the mysteries and suspense of the plot rather than gunfire and fistfights.
The movie begins with Dr. Martin Harris and his wife Elizabeth (January Jones, Mad Men) as they fly into Berlin for a biotechnology conference. After arriving at the hotel, Martin realizes he left a briefcase behind at the airport. While his wife checks in, Martin jumps in a cab to retrieve it. Thanks to an unsecure cargo truck losing its payload in the middle of traffic, Martin Harris gets an icy bath in a river as his cab careens off a bridge.
Martin wakes up in a hospital four days later, devoid of most of his memory. He remembers he’s in Berlin for a reason, and when a newscast about the conference is shown on the TV in his room, it all comes flooding back to him. He panics that his wife is alone in a foreign country, and he seems puzzled at the fact that no one has come looking for him. After convincing the doctor to allow him to leave, he rushes to the hotel, where a posh dinner is being held. He spots his wife and makes his way over to her, but this woman claims she doesn’t know who he is. In fact, there’s suddenly another Dr. Martin Harris who appears to challenge him. Hotel security “escorts” Martin out, and he returns to the hospital, confused and upset.
Normally in a film it’s easy to stand behind the main character, but I actually wondered to myself if Neeson’s character, Martin, was completely sane. Even though I – as a viewer – had watched as all of the events Martin took to be truth occurred, I wasn’t sure exactly what to believe. I couldn’t tell if this was a paranoid hallucination induced by Martin’s coma, or just the director playing a game with my head.
There’s a particular scene that really got that feeling across: when Martin is walking down an abandoned hallway to get to the tram station, a man appears behind him, walking quickly. As Martin begins to speed up, so does the man. Eventually they both break out into a full-on sprint, Martin makes it onto a train just as the doors close, and refuses to let the man in, though it certainly appears he was merely trying to catch his train. It’s a sign of good storytelling when one truly isn’t sure about how the protagonist perceives the world.
Yet my questioning of Martin’s sanity was answered as Martin returned to the hospital he woke up in. Just when Martin lets his guard down, the same man that he snubbed on the train appears in the hospital and calmly snaps the attending nurse’s neck. From that point on, the movie shifts into gear and accelerates into a exciting mystery behind the man who is Martin Harris. Martin enlists the help of a private detective (Bruno Ganz, Downfall) and tracks down the taxi driver Gina, (Diane Kruger, Inglourious Basterds) who saved his life. It’s revealed that she’s an illegal immigrant from Bosnia who was trying to make a few bucks on the side when she borrowed a friend’s taxi. Together the three try to put the pieces together, and stop the devious men trying to kill them.
Now the truth of Martin Harris, as well as his wife and his assailants, is too intricately woven into the remainder of the story to continue with my synopsis, but I can assure the reader that when the conspiracy is revealed, it isn’t what’s expected in the slightest. Not only does the story throw a curveball, but it leads the viewer down the completely wrong path. Few movies can do this well, but Unknown pulls it off flawlessly.
Unknown is a solid thriller, with a driving storyline and spectacular settings, but I’m sad to report that the acting is mediocre. Liam Neeson is superb, as per usual, and Diane Kruger provides a sturdy supporting role. However, while Kruger excels at giving her characters life, Gina isn’t much of a character to breathe life into. There’s a subplot in which Gina and Martin start to fall for each other, but it feels forced, as Neeson could easily pass for her father. Besides Bruno Ganz as Detective Jürgen, there just aren’t any memorable characters. This isn’t the fault of the actors, however, as it seems to me that the writers were too concentrated on the overall plot to give the characters any more depth than cardboard cutouts.
Regardless, I enjoyed Unknown. It was nice to take a break from action movies with the basic plot where Good Guy is wronged by Bad Guy and lots of guns are fired; or conspiracy movies where everyone is a traitor in some way or another. Though there isn’t anything spectacular about Unknown, it draws the viewer in with the mysterious storyline. Perhaps that was the goal, for how can something remain unknown if it leaves a memorable impression?
★★★★☆
