Unknown (2011)

Your first question is likely to be is this, Taken 2? 
Sadly, it is not. But is it any good at all then, you may possibly ask? Well I'll say... it would be great to come home to after a night out and see on ITV4 but under no circumstances should you attempt to watch Unknown UNLESS drunk; You'll be far too concerned with the concept of it making sense.
Good action thrillers have the giddying sense of making you feel high; making you scared or excited, producing testosterone prehaps(?)- bad ones just remind you of the good ones. I guess it's also like news. Good news means you could celebrate without even any booze - bad news just makes you want a drink...
I guess there is one fun things about this film- you can try to guess which of the German actors was the one who played Hitler from the movie Downfall and the Internet memes and there's another stupid bizarre bit where Neeson and Aiden Quinn have a wooden dialogue sing-off but...  beyond that it's not at all remarkable.  Speaking on the writing, it's like their commitment to stoic pulpy dialogue is such, you could have sworn it was even written on woodchip wallpaper.
I can't remember which movie i was talking about but I said in an earlier post that, that film was that sort of film Harrison Ford would make 20years ago- Liam Neeson makes these movies now like Taken, yes but also The A Team.  But thinking back to The A Team, that was a great recent example of an fun dumb action movie.  Forgettable? Entirely but I remember explosions and no ill will towards it.  My beef with this movie is that they just go further then is necessary with the story; I mean the concept is not that great-'guy loses his memory and finds no-one recognises him' but really the resolution to this film should be a lot simpler and the film-makers shouldn't have tried to be clever and come up with a smart ending because as much as I loved watching stupid people trying to be smart, stupid films labouring under the misconception that they can have a better pay-off is just horrible. I mean the ending of every episode of Doctor Who is the product of some macguffin that wasn't there in the 1st place and arrives in the last 5mins. Here the macguffin is something that completely exceeds your expectations of what the mystery was going to be and it's far too rich compared to the last 1hr of the film you just watched. Hold up. I don't. want anyone going to the trouble of watching this and I'm bothered I might be selling it as complex.  Don't think that. It's like eating a fish fingers and then being fed smoked salmon. It's still fish but it just don't sit right.


I watched Unknown (2011) at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies continues with Another Year (2010)...