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Unknown Unknowingly Could be a

Great Thriller, But Full of Cliches

By Maggie Scott

Has there ever been a sunny, colorful movie set in Berlin?  Years after the Cold War wall has come down, the city still seems perpetually drab and forbidding to most Americans.  So, when Dr. and Mrs. Martin Harris (Liam Neeson; January Jones) touch down in the gray, snowy city in the new thriller, Unknown, you aren’t too surprised when, with less than ten minutes off the clock, more than the weather has turned forboding.

With a Hitchcockian bang, Dr. Harris becomes the wrong man in the wrong place, as he survives an accident, only to discover that he doesn’t exist.  Insisting that his wife can identify him, Martin makes his way back to their hotel, only to have “Liz” not only deny she knows him, but link arms with a man (Aidan Quinn) she claims is the “real” Dr. Harris.

Maybe Dr. Bressler, the summit’s man-of-the moment can help Martin, if Martin can shake off pursuers.  But, the “fake” Martin has already gotten to Bressler, and he appears to know every detail of the “real” Martin’s life.

The mystery deepening, and the danger escalating after an attempt on his life, Martin seeks the services (“help me find me”) of one Ernst Jurgen (Bruno Ganz), a former member of East Germany’s secret police. He’s a curious man who knows he could be just one phone call away from his past fatally catching up with him.  Jurgen tells Martin to find the taxi driver who pulled him from the river.

Gina (Diane Kruger) is an illegal from Bosnia.  She wants to stay under the radar and she wants to stay alive; but there is something about Martin’s desperate need to reclaim his life that puts her in his corner, even as she’s dragged out of her corner of Berlin to go on the run with Martin.  With Jurgen checking out the details of Martin’s story, Martin appeals to long-time friend Rodney Cole (Frank Langella) for help.  But, Cole’s arrival will only add to the life-and-death urgency of Martin’s situation.

A situation that involving a hunger-banishing strain of corn, a bomb, an assassination and Martin realizing that no matter what mistakes he has made in his life up to this defining moment, “what matters is what I do now.”  Full of thriller clichés, sore thumb plot points, un-called-for sex scenes masquerading as flashback memories, and flat-line acting from Neeson, Unknown unknowingly has the germ of a truly good thriller with the character of Jurgen as acted with understated elegance by Ganz.

There are more atmospheric thrills in Jurgen’s drably modest apartment and Ganz’s worldly-wise, sad-sack face than in all the film’s bloated action.  A Warner Brothers release, rated PG-13 for violence and sexual content.

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