Climbing Higher Pictures

Another year, another dump month Liam Neeson action thriller. Looking to follow in the footsteps of the hugely popular Taken, this film, formally title Unknown White Male greets us with the thoroughly uninteresting personage of Martin Harris, a man who has seemingly been replaced by an impostor. The mystery unravels with all the adrenaline you expect, but is it enough to keep the exercise from feeling like a rehash?

Unknown

By Ryan Hamelin

Movie: B-

Another February, another Liam Neeson renegade action flick leaning heavily on the tried and true “revenge” formula. This time… it’s personal. Just kidding. Taken was definitely more personal than Unknown, and that’s probably the main reason why Taken is so much better. The twists here are more plot oriented and not particularly grounded in anything resembling human emotion. Car crashes happen, chase sequences stretch credibility… at least until the final reveal, when everything feels simultaneously out of our protagonist’s control, and also very inevitable. The film hits all the beats you’d expect it to hit, and even when it tries to break the mold, it lands quite heavily in a trench dug by more sophisticated predecessors. Of the great action flicks that the last decade has produced, this is not among the upper echelon. It still manages, however, to be a fun ride and maintain a consistent level of tension throughout.

First thing’s first, Liam Neeson is awesome. The man can carry even the worst written script, and while this isn’t the bottom of the barrel, it certainly benefited from his honest and truthful delivery. You need to care about him, and you’d be hard pressed not to relate to him on some shallow level. January Jones has a pretty robotic role, so I don’t know how much of it is direction and how much is a lack of emotional complexity, but this certainly doesn’t demonstrate all she has to offer. It’ll be interesting to see how she does in Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class, but I’d say not to rule one way or the other on her film career, especially based on her work in Mad Men. Diane Kruger and Frank Langella round out the recognizable ensemble, and each are about as good as you’d hope they’d be.

The biggest problem with films like Unknown is that the premise has to be manufactured as a cover for the twists that will eventually occur. Neeson as a biochemist isn’t a giant stretch, but the international intrigue that serves mostly as filler is a little harder to stomach. The twists aren’t so much memorable as they are jarring, and elements of Bourne level amnesia feel all too familiar. Death is handled without a lot of grace or impact, mitigating the worth of the supporting characters, plenty of which do not make it through the rollercoaster unscathed. The bad guys suffer the usual lack of aim and superhuman ability to anticipate future plot points they couldn’t possibly be aware of ahead of time. None of it insults the audience’s intelligence; it’s just the wrong side of what you’d want it to be. The momentum is more manufactured than earned, and the churning music keeps you at the edge of your seat, even if it’s more begrudgingly than willingly.

I feel like I’m misrepresenting my overall impression of the movie. It’s exactly what you want on a rainy day, and you won’t feel like you wasted your money. It’s ultimately satisfying, and a much needed adrenaline rush in a season of stale and lifeless star vehicles. I’d be more excited for the possible Taken 2 than this film, but if you’re in the mood for a good matinee, this is certainly worth checking out. Liam Neeson alone should make this a must-see for the action junkie you know, and looking at the performance of Jason Statham’s The Mechanic, it won’t have much competition when it lands on February 18^th. See it, enjoy it, and forget it. To give it the amount of thought I put into writing this review is something I would never recommend.