Wonderful character development!

Powerful

Great Film overall

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

An enjoyable film from start to finish, twists and turns and plenty of action, similarities to a Harrison Ford film, if I recall correctly.

REVIEW CONTAINS minor SPOILERSThe movie is about an American professor called Dr Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) who goes to Germany with his wife for some important conference talk about agriculture and corn. While he is checking into the hotel, he suddenly realises he forgot his brief case and passport at the airport. He quickly rushes out the door and flags down a taxi. While on the way to the airport, the taxi crashes into a river. He is knocked out but the (I think the character's French) female taxi driver called Gina (Diane Kruger) saves him. When Martin Harris wakes up in a German hospital, he finds that another man has taken his identity. Even his wife doesn't recognise him. With the help of Gina and one of her old Nazi contacts, they slowly uncover the truth. To tell you more would be to spoil the movie, but let's just say you rethink what small part of the movie you saw before the car crash, and - minor spoilers incoming - unnecessarily. This bothered me after I saw the movie, I really would have liked to see lies or very specific things that are only noticeable on a second viewing in the first scene. But you don't need to watch the movie twice to realise that there was nothing hidden in the first scene, because the plot simply didn't allow it. For me that was the biggest let-down with this movie. All the trickery took place after you knew there was trickery going on. This made the movie have less replay value than a movie like Inception or especially Memento. For me at least, I went into this movie thinking it was going to be one thing but it delivered only half that, and the other half fell into another category. What I'm saying there is not that Unknown was a half hearted movie, but it was only half in the category of what I expected it would be fully in.Liam Neeson performed about as well as in Non-Stop, which is typical Liam Neeson. The real stand out performance was by Diane Kruger who played Gina. I hadn't really noticed Diane in any other movies but in Unknown she really did a good job.In conclusion, this is basically your typical Liam Neeson movie with really good supporting cast. I personally liked Non-Stop (awesome movie) better but this movie did have it's own charms too.Would recommend if you're a Liam Neeson fan or someone who has watched too many Christopher Nolan movies and wants to be disappointed with the plot.

Along with Taken, Non-Stop, and the impressive looking Run All Night, Unknown is another excellent Action/Thriller to star Liam Neeson, and once again he does a great job with his role (he seems to suit these parts so well).Here we see Neeson take up the role of Dr. Martin Harris, a biochemist who is travelling to Germany for a conference but before he can attend the conference, he is involved in a car accident that almost kills him. After waking from a 4-day coma, he soon discovers that someone has apparently taken his identity, and no one - not even his wife - believes that he is the real Dr. Martin Harris.This film has it all....great action, suspense, mystery, and a good couple of twists along the way just to keep it even more interesting (especially the main twist at the end). Are some of the scenes unrealistic? Of course. Are they ridiculous, though? Definitely not. There's a difference between unrealistic and unrealistically ridiculous and Unknown falls into the former with these scenes. The thing is, this is an Action/Thriller....if you want pure realism & true to life then watch a Documentary. You get exactly what you pay for with Unknown.Apart from a few dialogue moments here and there, the film is well written, and even though it's not the most original of story's, it is still more than capable of holding it's own for pure entertainment value. You will notice that Unknown bears huge resemblances to The Bourne Identity (and even Taken to a certain extent), but this shouldn't put you off enjoying what is an enjoyable Action/Thriller.The cast all do fantastic jobs with their characters as well, from Neeson, Kruger, Jones, and Quinn all great in the main starring roles, to Olivier Schneider and Stipe Erceg as Smith & Jones (no, not THOSE Smith & Jones), who bring such a menace to their characters that you find yourself routing for the "good guys" that little bit more.Unknown is definitely one to watch, so watch it and enjoy it.

Judging by the poster and the plot synopsis this movie seemed like a cash-in on the success of "Taken" (even more so than "Taken 2"), but I was surprised by the different style and the fact that Neeson is slightly less implausibly bad-ass. He's just an average guy that tries to prove everybody is framing him, he doesn't do much fighting but it isn't required to keep the compelling plot interesting. The story is genuinely well-crafted and gives you a conclusion that you don't see coming from miles away (unless you're amazing at that type of thing). Oh, and Bruno "hey, isn't that Hitler from Der Untergang?" Ganz is in this, a highly underrated actor that effortlessly adds a bit of class to any movie he's in. In the end things may get a bit unbelievable, but the movie's twist is such a great find that I doubt you'll mind the lack of realism.