Unknown

An American doctor stranded in a European country where he doesn’t speak the language ... yes, it’s another big budget US film where, despite his obvious high level of education and generous nature, our hero can’t seem to find 5 minutes to learn a few basic phrases of the language of his host country. This observation reflects a personal bugbear of mine – if Sean Connery can learn a few lines of Russian for The Hunt For Red October (1990) and speak the rest of the film in a Scottish accent, then surely Irish-born Neeson, with an American accent, could have been shown at least have been seen struggling with the local language.

That is a small fault, however, in a very good story with a great cast. Dr Harris has come to Berlin with his beautiful wife, Liz (January Jones) to a medical research conference. But before he can follow her into their hotel, he realises that his briefcase, containing all his conference papers, is not with the rest of the luggage. So he heads back to the airport to find it. Unfortunately, there is an accident on the way. When Martin awakes from his coma, he has no identity papers and only the barest memory of his past and the driver of the taxi, Gina (Diane Kruger) who pulled him free has disappeared. Why is there a different Dr Martin Harris (Aidan Quinn) not only on the arm of his wife, but on his university’s website?

As Martin tries to make sense of his situation, he finds himself in a physically and mentally isolated place. Not only is he in a foreign country, Liz, when he finds her again, coolly tells both him and the hotel security chief that she has no idea of who he is. Jones plays beautifully the woman who appears to be either sweet and innocent, or the most wicked of femmes fatale.

Is Martin going mad? As he stumbles away from the conference, forced to track down the only person who may be able to help him, Gina, Martin is engulfed in the cold dark night of Berlin descending from the sophisticated atmosphere of a 5 star hotel into the city’s grimy underworld.

In the age of the internet, mobile phones with cameras and widespread security surveillance it is getting harder to have a fake ID and get away with it - a university professor would leave a long trail of traceable information. There are other issues of logic which also don’t quite work, but Unknown smooths over these small cracks with some very good filmmaking wallpaper, including great tension and chase scenes. Without revealing too much, it is significant to the film’s success that it was adapted by Oliver Butcher and also Stephen Cornwell, who is the son of John le Carré, from a book, Out Of My Head, whose author is Frenchman, Didier Van Cauwelaert. There is unexpected humour in several parts and pathos generated by supporting roles of Bruno Ganz and Frank Langella. I was constantly reminded of both Frantic (1988) and The Fugitive (1993), and at one level Harrison Ford would have been perfectly cast in Neeson’s role of the bewildered, decent man. But Neeson’s urbane smoothness adds an extra layer to his role as the disoriented research scientist.

Berlin is a city of recent divided history and the past catching up with people is the major theme of Collet-Serra’s irony-laden tale of a man searching for the truth of his identity. All the characters have something to hide, and when this is revealed, there are usually dire results. There is a particularly delicious irony in the fates of Ganz’s and Langella’s characters, whose history, of which they are both immensely proud, is their own undoing.

Unknown is somewhat mis-titled as, directorially, it often follows familiar paths but as a mainstream thriller it has enough substance to satisfy while reunified Berlin, where refugees from both the past and present come in from the cold, is its perfect setting.

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