DVD OF THE WEEK: Unknown
by Vadim Rizov 
It's a generic thriller title, but
Unknown is a fitting word for the issue ailing Dr. Martin Harris (
Liam Neeson). Known: Dr. Martin Harris, a real American biotechnologist, is scheduled to speak at a Berlin conference. Unknown: whether Harris, in shock and possibly brain-damaged after a freakish traffic accident, actually
is Harris, a confusing problem since there's another man (
Aidan Quinn) back at his hotel answering to his name, backed up by his loving wife Liz (
January Jones). Discovering he apparently doesn't exist understandably bugs the doctor, who gets very belligerent with a hotel manager whose barely restrained impatience and clipped English suggest lots of experience dealing with testy Americans who can't be bothered to learn another language.
Following up on his part in
Taken as an alpha dad wreaking havoc against suspicious foreigners of color in Europe, Neeson once again gets to embody the Ugly American abroad, who's safe as long as he sticks to the expensive hotels and designated tourist areas but out of his depth anywhere else. Though marketed as
Taken 2?with trailers emphasizing the very few moments where Neeson actually growls and hits people?
Unknown is more fun and, oddly, more socially responsible, teaching its protagonist to adapt to the immigrants around him rather than reflexively punching them all.
Most of the charge in
Taken comes from its over-the-top luridness, from Neeson's every grimace and snarlingly strained accent to the ridiculously bone-crunching violence. From its opening shots,
Unknown proves more a slow-burn thriller; it doesn't have to be sadistic to keep your attention. After cabbing it from the airport to the Hotel Adlon, Martin rushes back for a left-behind suitcase, only to have a refrigerator fall in the taxi's path, a nearly
Final Destination-caliber accident that ends with Martin being pulled from the river by driver Gina (
Diane Kruger), who then vanishes.
Without spoiling the twists, the broad outline of what follows: waking up in the hospital, Martin can't be sure of anything, not even if the freak accident was just that or a deliberate murder attempt staged by godlike tormentors. Stuck in the classic noir nightmare of returning to the hotel to find that no one has ever seen him, Martin goes on the run with Gina, an illegal immigrant peeved to have her shaky work-status endangered by the fact that everyone's trying to kill the lug she has to guide through the city. Assassins pursue the pair as they retreat into the non-English-speaking part of Berlin, from her cramped apartment to a nightclub where the doorman (presumably another migrant worker) knows Gina and lets the two in.
The subtext couldn't be clearer: Xenophobia sucks.
Unknown isn't particularly subtle about hammering this point home, from its passing depiction of Gina's cafe boss erupting into a monologue about illegal aliens taking everyone's jobs to its old-fashioned explosive finale, which blows up part of the Hotel Adlon?a structure that actually
was destroyed at the end of World War II, rebuilt before being demolished by the East German government in '84, then again reconstructed on a grand scale in '97. The support structure that helps out Martin far away from his cozy room-service comforts is a network of illegals all looking out for each other: the climax literally blows up part of Old Europe, whose most benevolent attitude toward its migrant workers is to turn a blind eye to cheap labor.
Unknown underlines all this with a faceoff between two of its supporting players. It's always nice when a Hollywood movie stops dead, turns off all special effects to let dueling thespians ignore everything else around them (think John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson in
1408 or Gary Oldman and David Thewlis meeting in
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban). Here, we get
Bruno Ganz (of
Wings of Desire, but best known now as YouTube's
viral Hitler from
Downfall) and
Frank Langella, whose casting nearly always signifies villainy. Ganz is the ex-Stasi interrogator-turned-private investigator Neeson hires for some help piecing together the conspiracy; Langella is the friend called to Berlin to vouch for him, forgetting that, given the actor's recent roles, he's almost certainly going to try to kill him. The ex-Stasi and current CIA boogeyman (given one of the more ridiculously '70s-ish backstories on file) have a tense, pleasantly hammy stand-off. The screenplay forces Ganz to explain (for the benefit of uneducated Americans, presumably) who the Stasi were, but the scene gets past exposition soon and?thanks to the veterans at center stage?achieves real historical resonance. Two Old World powers face off, their attitudes to each other still framed by Cold War alliances and conflicts; both will be rendered irrelevant and/or out-of-commission by film's end.
The action scenes are sometimes incoherent but include a couple of amazing setpieces: Martin Harris' escape from the hospital, outpacing one of those feel-no-pain, remorseless assassin types, and a nighttime car chase that takes full advantage of icy road skids. But a lot of
Unknown's appeal is postcard-friendly: both in the upscale and neglected parts of Berlin, the city adds context for an ingeniously stupid thriller plot. Director
Jaume Collet-Serra keeps things moving fast enough to paper over plot holes, which may be the only way to get multiplex audiences to sit through a movie with a serious point completely irrelevant to most Americans: be nice to your new work force, Old Europe.
Posted by ahillis at June 21, 2011 1:28 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment