Movie Review: 'Unknown' a messy bargain that includes two car chases

The film "Unknown," currently playing at the Fandango Galaxy multiplex in Carson City, is the kind of movie one wonders if anyone really read the script before proceeding.

It's such a mishmash of plot that one hardly knows who's what and what's what. If there is any quality to the movie it is thanks to Liam Neeson who plays a doctor coming to Berlin for a conference. He forgets his valise and rushes out to catch the cabbie but instead takes a dunk in a river when the cab goes off the street. He winds up in a coma for four days, rushes off to the hotel (the famed Ablion) where he left his wife. He sees her there but she doesn't recognize him as her husband and in fact introduces him to her real husband.

OK, with me?

Things get complex here. Dr. Harris (Liam) tracks down the driver of the cab he was riding in that plunged in the river (Diane Kruger), who reluctantly agrees to help him. Two car chases ensue, neither making much sense but I guess you gotta have a car chase in an A movie. A German private eye gets involved and dies of self-administered when confronted by a supposed friend of Dr. Harris. Of course, he's a bad guy.

From the plot takes us to a banquet at the hotel, where Dr. Harris' supposed wife is planting a bomb to kill a scientist who has come up with a superior kind of corn seed. Turns out Liam has been an assassin in Berlin for a couple of months and never was Dr. Harris. He somehow forgot about it. But it all works out with Liam and Diane catching a train to freedom under new names.

Well, there's not much sense to it all and the production is shoddy with, for instance, Liam's facial injury switches from one side to the other for no reason other than casual makeup artists. Many other holes, such as Liam fleeing a hospital in dressing gown and emerging from a police car in clothes that he had with home. Don't German police wonder about such things? Not here.

Harris pseudo wife is a baddie; you can tell by the sexy dress she wears before blowing things up. Kurger is an attractive taxi driver and waitress (why both jobs? she's an illegal alien apparently and they need money).
In sum, I've explained things a lot better than the movie will to viewers. This is another movie made just so we could get two car chases for the price of one.

Liam's OK as the stolid know-nothing and the rest of the cast acceptable, even if they apparently don't know what's going on. Direction is shoddy, script something someone should have read carefully before proceeding.
But I fear I carp. Berlin looks good, much different from when I stood watch with other journalists as Check Point Charlie. Or is it Charley? I've forgotten, but I'm sure you recall that gateway to the East in Berlin. I think we had better stories there than "Unknown" offers.

— Sam Bauman

Cast
— Liam Neeson as Dr. Martin Harris, a botanist and the main male protagonist
— Diane Kruger as Gina, a Bosnian cab driver and the main female protagonist[
— January Jones as Elizabeth "Liz" Harris, Martin's "wife" and the main female antagonist
— Frank Langella as Professor Rodney Cole, a colleague of Martin who reveals to be also an antagonist
— Aidan Quinn as Martin B., the impostor and the main male antagonist
— Bruno Ganz as Ernst Jürgen, a former Stasi agent who apparently works as a private investigator
— Sebastian Koch as a sympathetic scientist who is a target for the the terrorists, Bressler

Directed by: Jaume Collet-Serra
Produced by: Joel Silver, Leonard Goldberg and Andrew Rona
Screenplay by: Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cornwell
Based on: "Out of My Head" by Didier van Cauwelaert
Music by: John Ottman and Alexander Rudd
Cinematography: Flavio Labiano
Editing by: Timothy Alverson
Studio: Dark Castle Entertainment; Studio Babelsberg
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures Release date(s) 18 February 2011. Running time 113 minutes. Rated R.