Review: Unknown (2011)

Director Jaume Collet-Serra's Unknown stars the usually impressive Liam Neeson as Dr. Martin Harris, a man who awakens from a coma after a car accident on a business trip in Germany with his wife Liz (January Jones). Upon awakening Dr. Harris finds that no one knows who he is, including his colleagues and spouse. Another man seems to have taken the place of Martin, playing the role of Dr. Harris the businessman, and Martin the husband. Harris refuses to believe the allegations that he has lost his sanity, and begins to pursue the retrieval of his life- starting with questioning the driver of the car at the dawn of this disorientating predicament. This film was viewed out of stardom of quality released films, and unlike The Mechanic, I was not pleasantly surprised. Unknown is simply a mess of a film. Aside from the fuzzy, made-for-TV movie look, and the detestable sound effects, the film's plot was schizophrenic, uneven, and unpleasant. Additionally, January Jones is significantly overrated. Due to her role in such a series as AMC's Mad Men, viewers such as myself were under the impression that she had talent. After withstanding the punishment of viewing Unknown, I stand corrected. Jones was by far the most two-dimensional, card board cut-out character in the film, and that's saying a lot. For whatever reason, I failed to do my research prior to purchasing a ticket for the film, but if I had I would have realized that the director of the film- Jaume Collet-Serra- is responsible for such cinematic catastrophes as Orphan and the Paris Hilton 2005 remake of House of Wax. To give credit where credit is due, the ending of the film was far better than the preceding scenes- this is not saying much. The distance from Schindler's List to Unknown is a far drop, however, I'm going to refrain from deducting points from Neeson and assume he just needs to fire his agent. Unknown is disappointingly a rarely enjoyable mess of a film, earning it a whopping 1 star.