There is a scene early on in Jaume Collet-Serra’s Unknown where the disheveled, confused Dr. Martin Harris (Liam Neeson), his life replaced by another man after a brutal car accident, confronts his imitator (played with sardonic evil by Aidan Quinn). Both attempt to convince a scientific colleague (the under-used Sebastian Koch) of their validity by blanketing him with information about his life. Back-and-forth, back-and-forth it goes until they’re speaking on top of each other in an eerie, surreal chorus of insanity. It’s very much the best moment in this sometimes surreal, oft-times generic thriller - a moment that expands upon the paranoid delusions rather than the wham-bam action.
The plot, and
execution at times, of Unknown feels decidedly
Hitchcockian with Liam Neeson’s confused bio-scientist Dr.
Harris struggling to unearth a mystery in a world that won’t
acknowledge one exists. Why won’t his wife (played with
daunting blandness by January Jones) remember who he is? Who
is this man who’s taken his place? And how deep does all of
this go? The more Hitchockian moments in the film are the
ones that Collet-Serra handles so well. The eerie flashback
sequence in an MRI-machine, the aforementioned collision of
two Dr. Harris’, the former East German secret intelligence
officer (Bruno Ganz) who assists Harris in finding out who
he is - these touches, bizarre and menacing touches create
an overtly threatening atmosphere around Dr. Harris that
draws you in, leaves you wondering what’s really going on.
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