Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Best movie of this year hands down!

As Good As It Gets

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

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

While the stunts, chases, fights and so on that pepper Jaume Collet-Serra's "Unknown" seem at times to push credibility to and beyond its limits, it transpires that they do not do so quite as much as we at first think, for this complex thriller story mostly hangs together well enough, if one is patient enough to wait for the twist in the tale to appear. There have been no shortage of "respectable guy goes to a foreign city and forgets who he is" kind of movies, and they are mostly worth a watch. But here an extremely intricate setup is involved, and mostly it's interesting and fun to see how it can possibly all work out...With that, a lot hangs on how credible Liam Neeson can seem as Dr Martin Harris ... and not Dr Martin Harris. Mostly Neeson seems up to the job, but if his character is to reform, the love and support of a good woman (at last) is a necessity, and a lovely (in every sense) Diane Kruger here comes over very well indeed as "Gina", an immigrant from somewhere to the east whose non-legal status in Berlin has given her some of the experience needed to "keep up" when Harris's life gets VERY complicated. Two other huge presences in the film are a spellbindingly-good Bruno Ganz as an ex-Stasi man (where we of course know that there can never be such a thing as an ex-Stasi man), and Frank Langella, who - as usual - puts in a great performance, this time as the coolly-likable-yet-horrible Rodney Cole.For me, a further star of the film is the (to me quite familiar) city of Berlin itself - tamed maybe, compared with its former status, but still giving the impression that anything just might happen there. Playing a key role is the Hotel Adlon Kempinski, just a stone's throw from the Brandenburg Gate, which has seen it's fair share of history (though what we see now is mostly the 1997 rebuild). There are plenty of other settings too, sumptuous or downmarket, and all help contribute to the tangible atmosphere that does quite a lot to make up for other, occasionally over-the-top elements.Overall, then, an intriguing and satisfying watch with a couple of very good parts well played to savour.

REVIEW CONTAINS minor SPOILERSThe movie is about an American professor called Dr Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) who goes to Germany with his wife for some important conference talk about agriculture and corn. While he is checking into the hotel, he suddenly realises he forgot his brief case and passport at the airport. He quickly rushes out the door and flags down a taxi. While on the way to the airport, the taxi crashes into a river. He is knocked out but the (I think the character's French) female taxi driver called Gina (Diane Kruger) saves him. When Martin Harris wakes up in a German hospital, he finds that another man has taken his identity. Even his wife doesn't recognise him. With the help of Gina and one of her old Nazi contacts, they slowly uncover the truth. To tell you more would be to spoil the movie, but let's just say you rethink what small part of the movie you saw before the car crash, and - minor spoilers incoming - unnecessarily. This bothered me after I saw the movie, I really would have liked to see lies or very specific things that are only noticeable on a second viewing in the first scene. But you don't need to watch the movie twice to realise that there was nothing hidden in the first scene, because the plot simply didn't allow it. For me that was the biggest let-down with this movie. All the trickery took place after you knew there was trickery going on. This made the movie have less replay value than a movie like Inception or especially Memento. For me at least, I went into this movie thinking it was going to be one thing but it delivered only half that, and the other half fell into another category. What I'm saying there is not that Unknown was a half hearted movie, but it was only half in the category of what I expected it would be fully in.Liam Neeson performed about as well as in Non-Stop, which is typical Liam Neeson. The real stand out performance was by Diane Kruger who played Gina. I hadn't really noticed Diane in any other movies but in Unknown she really did a good job.In conclusion, this is basically your typical Liam Neeson movie with really good supporting cast. I personally liked Non-Stop (awesome movie) better but this movie did have it's own charms too.Would recommend if you're a Liam Neeson fan or someone who has watched too many Christopher Nolan movies and wants to be disappointed with the plot.

I decided to watch this movie because it had Liam, the Harrison ford of the second millennium, the cute Kruger and a change of locations with Berlin. In addition, the story sounded like a mystery. Now, the result is average, not totally awful but not worthy of a second watch. I have never went there and maybe it's due to winter time but this Berlin looks a cold, industrial city that surely don't have the beauty of Paris or London… Then, i didn't understand why Kruger doesn't play a German girl ?? About the plot, it's a sort of reboot of « frantic » : same professor, same hunt in a foreign country, same companies game, same help from a young woman, same little flat… Maybe the difference is the twist but there, there is a lot of inspiration from « XIII ». The action sequences are maybe well orchestrated but they are totally unbelievable, especially the car chase ! At the end, my last question is why it's a french movie when everything and everyone aren't not french ???