Neeson plays Dr Martin Harris who's just flown into Berlin for a science conference with his slightly frosty trophy wife Liz (played by January Jones). However, as soon as he arrives at his hotel he finds he’s left his briefcase and passport at the airport taxi-rank so without telling Mrs Harris he hops into the first taxi available and back he goes. Four days later, he wakes from a coma to find that... But to say any more would spoil the plot of this implausible Hitchcock knock-off.
Like Roman Polanski’s Frantic and other Hitchcock-style “wrong man on the run” films it can never compete with the master of suspense’s best. What starts out as a nifty thriller with an intriguing premise ends up through illogical plotting as plain daft. Whereas Taken had memorable scenes and good action sequences Unknown never feels anything other than an exercise in creating another film by stitchng together similar elements in slightly different ways. The acting is good with a standout cameo from Bruno Ganz’s kindly ex-Stasi officer and solid support from Diane Kruger as a beautiful Bosnian taxi driver. The excellent cinematography makes the most of a dark and wintery Berlin.
To make a great film Alfred Hitchcock once said you need three things: "the script, the script, and the script" and this is exactly what Unknown lacks despite having a lot of other things going for it.
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