Unknown

Unknown is a straightforward action-thriller that doesn't establish any new ground but is the perfect kind of movie to get from Red Box when you are visiting your mother, as I did last week. It is also one of a number of films that has strangely seen Liam Neeson bloom into a bankable action hero.

Neeson plays Dr. Martin Harris, a biotechnologist attending a conference in Berlin. He is accompanied by his wife, January Jones. When he leaves a briefcase behind at the airport he jumps in a cab, driven by Diane Kruger (does Germany regularly have such stunning cabbies?) They end up in a car accident, and Neeson is in a coma for four days. He is surprised he is not attended by his wife, and when he does find her at a reception, she claims not to know him. Not only that, but another man (Aidan Quinn) says he is Martin Harris.

So what's going on here? Neeson doubts his sanity, and ends up hiring a private detective (Bruno Ganz) to find out what's going on. He's shadowed by sinister looking gunmen, including one who tries to kill him in a hospital. He finds Kruger, and is promptly attacked by two men. He and Kruger escape. Later, Frank Langella will appear, playing someone who Neeson thinks is an old friend.

Directed by Jaume Collet-Sera, Unknown is a nice, modest time-killer that will keep you guessing. I didn't figure everything out, but the twist, as it were, does recall another movie involving amnesia, so it's not exactly original.

Neeson kinds of growls his way through the film, as he does with many of his roles these days. He seems to have inherited a certain kind of role from Harrison Ford, and does quite well with it, though it makes Schindler's List seem like a hundred years ago.