So much average

hyped garbage

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Gathering up DVDs to trade in,I was surprised to discover that I had somehow picked up 2 DVDs of this interesting-sounding Neo- Noir!,which led to me deciding that it was time to uncover the unknown.The plot:Waking up in a locked abandoned warehouse,a man finds himself surrounded by 1 man tied up to a chair,another has been shot & handcuffed to a wall,whilst 2 others are lying on the floor badly beaten.As he tries to piece his memory back together,a phone begins to ring.Picking up the phone,the man is told by a stranger that he will arrive at the warehouse in a few hours time.Putting the phone down,the other 4 men start to wake up.With none of them having any memory of how they got here,they each decide to team up,so that they can break out of the warehouse.Whilst preparing their escape plan,some fragments of memory start to return.View on the film:Whilst the screenplay by Matthew Waynee is a bit too open on its rift of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs,Waynee offers an excellent mix of tense psychological thrills and gritty Neo-Noir.For the first half of the title,Waynee makes each of the 5 guys Film Noir loners whose dark pasts they each secretly want to stay forgotten.Keeping the movie limited to a handful of characters,Waynee superbly shows the gang splitting themselves in groups,with the ones who were lying on the ground believing that they were the "good guys" whilst the 2 handcuffed/tied up were the up to no good "baddies"Gradually regaining their memories,Waynee hits each twist with a sharp precision,as each of the guys start to remember whose side they are really on.Despite filming the flashback fragments in a far too glossy manner,director Simon Brand & cinematographer Steve Yedlin give the movie an excellent burnt-out Film Noir atmosphere.Keeping any light/windows away from the warehouse,Brand and Yedlin grind dry grey,whites & blood reds into the film,which along with brilliantly showing the isolated location that the men are stuck in,also subtly displays the hazy,cloudy memories that all of the group are suffering from.Reuniting after working together on The Thin Red Line, Jim Caviezel and Barry Pepper each give great performances,with Pepper giving his stranger a nervous sense of loyalty to Caviezel,whilst Caviezel shows his character to be a Film Noir loner,who is desperate to get away from the past which is slowly coming back.Joining Caviezel & Pepper, Joe Pantoliano gives a traditionally great slime ball performance,whilst Greg Kinnear gives a wonderful edgy performance,which plants a seed of doubt into the group,as they start to uncover the unknown.

Jean Jacket wakes up in a closed room where the one exit is locked by passcode. Other prisoners are present, and most seem worse for the wear. Jean Jacket pounds on the door and raises a holler or ten, but gets no attention. He takes a phone call, and takes notes, but seems not to know what it was about.Broken Nose, Bound Man, Handcuffed Man, and Rancher Shirt wake up soon there after, and the four of them try to figure out who they are and why they are together.Elsewhere, Eliza cooperates with law enforcement to get her husband back.Snakeskin Boots intercepts the hostage money and eludes the police; he calls the trapped men and tells them he will meet with them before sundown. Bound Man finds a gun, but Jean Jacket takes it away from him. They discover instructions about the toxic gas stored in canister around the rooms. It can cause temporary memory loss in small doses. Broken Nose begins to remember a bit later; he was one of the abductees. He talks to Rancher Shirt, the other abductee. Rancher Shirt tries to get the gun from Jean Jacket, but fails.Broken Nose frees Bound Man, and the anger rises and partial memories surface. Jean Jacket gives Handcuffed Man some water, but cannot get the handcuffs off.The last two kidnappers are coming with the money. Two cops are tailing them with mixed success. Erin is in despair about losing her husband. The men in the room with memory loss are cooperating to find a way out before the kidnappers come.How does this pan out? Be prepared for twists and turns as the memories surface.------Scores-------Cinematography: 8/10 No problems.Sound: 9/10 Well done.Acting: 7/10 Jim Caviezel, Bridget Moynihan, Peter Stormare, and Joe Pantoliano were excellent. On the other hand, Greg Kinnear was unconvincing as usual; with every line he speaks, I look for an indication that it's a joke or a bluff. I only believe his insincerity. Jeremy Sisto disappoints as always. Screenplay: 9/10 Kept me guessing to the end.

Unknown plays more like a psychological thriller rather than a plain old thriller, as it follows around five men who awaken in an abandoned warehouse with no recollection of their name or previous events. It isn't before long that they find that three of the five men are free, while the other two are tied up. This could possibly mean that the three are the kidnappers and the other two, the hostages.There are a grand amount of twist and turns, so many, that I will not bother to try and decipher things. Not only are we following the guys in the warehouse, but we're also trying to keep up with the band of robbers who are apparently tied in with the five in the warehouse. The five guys in the warehouse don't have names, though. The credits of the film refer to them by their appearance. Jim Caviezel, easily my favorite character of the film, is "Jean Jacket," while Greg Kinnear is "Broken Nose." Just like many thrillers, you may have to suspend disbelief. Apparently, how these men lost their memories is because a gas leak was going on for several days, wiping them clean. So, the gas can wipe their memories, but when breathed for two days straight can't kill them? No problem. I've dealt with stranger circumstances with that. Physics in Transformers: Dark of the Moon for example.Performance-wise, the film is stable. It's not easy to pull off the "I don't know because I just don't know" act, but all five of the men are capable and shy away from overacting. The film also gets strong points for the editing and setting, which are creepy and involved, yet still feels a tad unexplored. It's too bad we didn't spend the remainder of the film in the warehouse, rather than both the outside and the warehouse. Setting it up in that location would've been wholly effective and the building blocks for a wonderful claustrophobic thriller.Unknown is sufficient entertainment. It isn't the edge of your seat type or the play with your mind type thriller, but the somewhat preposterous but ultimately rewarding kind of thriller. For me, that's more than enough. I too, can't imagine what the auditions were like when Jim Caviezel tried out. "What has this guy done in the past?" "He played Jesus." "Sign him up." Starring: Jim Caviezel, Greg Kinnear, Bridget Moynahan, Joe Pantoliano, Barry Pepper, and Jeremy Sisto. Directed by: Simon Brand.

Okay, there is some 'action' scenes that make it good for a 2-hour getaway. But c'mon! It's laughable beyond the action when one considers for a moment what it's trying to make us accept or believe.Such as: --Forgetting the 'brief case' with all the pass ports, information is unfathomable. -- He rushes back to the airport to get it without so much as a hint to the 'wife' that he's doing so. -- What does 'oz' mean everywhere? Another blogger already noticed that. -- Why did the 'wife' go into the suite to onhook the bomb because her face still would've been recorded when they were there 3 months prior anyway! -- And why didn't she break the wall out further to get to the bomb deactivate system, rather than reaching down blindly down through the wall and blowing herself up anyway? -- Why did the hardened, East German spy readily eat cyanide just because that old rogue showed up at his apartment? Why'd he give in so soon, when he could've killed him as a trespasser or robber? -- Why was it that the only two people catching a train was Liam and the other hit dude? -- Save your money and go see instead: Barney's Version.