Unknown

Indian Express Rating: **

‘UNKNOWN’ should come easy to a film about a scientist who slips into a coma for a brief four days before a biotechnology conference,only to find his world turned upside down when he wakes up. The thing is,‘known’ comes even easier.

So,after the first half an hour when Dr Martin Harrris (Neeson) lands in snow-covered Berlin with pretty wife (Jones),leaves his briefcase with passport behind at the airport,dashes back from hotel before checking in to retrieve the same,realises his phone isn’t functioning,and falls head on into the Spree river,only to wake up in hospital with his memory gone,there’s little about Unknown that you haven’t seen before.

Director Collet-Sera isn’t even interested in following the driver of the cab,Gina (Kruger),in which Harris was travelling,who rescues him from the water. Nor in Harris’s beautiful wife Elizabeth (Jones),who refuses to recognise him when the doctor lands up at the hotel where he left her,snatching at pieces of his past that he can put together. She has a different man (Aidan Quinn) by his side,who she insists is the real Dr Harris.

Unknown instead puts Harris No. 1 in car chases,fistfights,explosions and the like,chased by hitmen. Even a delightful ex-Stasi who he hires as a detective,with an old-mannered air and eyes that seem to see far beyond the rest of us,isn’t allowed to put in much of a sweat. With Kruger playing her,Gina does re-emerge,but as an illegal immigrant with options fewer than a hunted man without memory in a foreign land.

What should have been a psychological drama ends up as an action thriller,with Neeson trying desperately to justify this sudden transformation so late in his acting career. His fists put in a lot of work,but what one can’t help pitying are his furrowed brows – never getting a moment of clarity.