It seems almost too easy to compare this to Taken, given the combination of action movie + Liam Neeson + American dude in exotic European locale, and because I never shy away from doing the easy thing, that's what I'm going to do too. Taken, as it turns out, is one of my favorite action films of the new century. Neeson brings an inspired amount of gravity and seriousness to the role, without falling into a joyless and overbearing BIGNESS ala Christian Bale in Terminator: Salvation. He has a sort of natural, empathy-invoking charisma that, when mixed with Luc Besson's stripped down and streamlined script, works something close to wonderfully better than it has any right to.
Unknown is not that movie. While many of the action scenes are paced and put together well enough (once again, European filmmakers take American staples and re-invigorate them long after America has forgotten how to use them properly), the movie suffers from a burdensome, overplotted script that thinks the best way to keep action fans entertained is to also throw a fairly useless mystery into the mix. My disdain for mysteries may not be well-documented, but I am about to begin documenting it. Mysteries are boring. And, lately, they are an excuse used by entertainers in order not to say anything interesting. Well, that's probably not the real reason. The real reason is that everyone actually seems to like mysteries. They like the act of trying to figure out if they can spot the twist before the movie gives it to them. They like trying to guess whodunit. Well, I don't. The fact of the matter is that the average whodunit, it really doesn't matter whodunit. If it can be any number of red herrings, then it is thematically inconsequential which one it is. So I would much rather a filmmaker use what time he has to offer me to keep me thinking in a much less superficial way than to ask, "What's the answer to this riddle?" In Unknown, the answer is not easy to guess, mostly because there are no clues and it comes so far out of left field that, while it technically makes sense, is not really even a game between the viewer and the writer anymore. It's more like a magician's "ah-ha!" moment. Fair enough. It could be worse.
But in the mean time, it has wasted a bunch of great promise and screen time that could've been better spent with more action and/or suspense sequences. There's a moment in which Neeson is walking down a long corridor in a Metro station and a man may or may not be following him. The tension generated in this scene is so immaculate and fist-clenchingly good that it made me think "This is what The American should've felt like." But, of course, because the movie is so concerned with its mystery and plot, it turns out the guy totally is following him, because there isn't enough time to "waste" on actual paranoia. A shame, because I still think The American is a good idea. And this could've been a Total Recall meets The American type moment, except for how little interest the movie has in exploring either of those ideas.
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