Unknown

Liam Neeson's an odd one isn't he? I think I've wrongly pigeon-holed him as being in more artsy films than he ever is. I guess it must be the remnants of his landmark role in Schindler's List sticking to him as he desperately moves into ever more ridiculous roles. Playing Hannibal in last year's 'The A Team' might have done his bank balance good, but his credibility took a nosedive. Neeson also starred in 'Unknown' last year, a film in which he plays a man who loses his identity after being involved in a car crash in Berlin. This is crucially not to be confused with interesting and small-budget 'Unknown' from a few years back. This version is a big budget Hollywood behemoth.

The premise is that Neeson's character remembers who he is, while everyone he knows appears to have forgotten him - even his wife (played with ease by January Jones - who needs to be cast as someone other than an ice queen at some point). His doctor warns him that head injuries of the like he has suffered can cause delusions, but surely it is the world around him that has become deluded?

I was wondering if the film was going to go down a 'Vanilla Sky' route, and although there are aspects of that in there it ends up being a bit of a Hollywoodised cop out. It's not bad enough for me to deliberately give the plot away, there is an entertaining twist that I don't want to spoil. Don't dig too deeply into the intricacies of the plot or bits will start falling out of it at break-neck pace. The ending is a huge cop out and isn't entirely consistent, but then the whole film is pretty unbelievable if you think about it for more than a few moments. It's a film that can't help but immerse itself in Hollywood clichés - although one plus point was being able to see Bruno Ganz not being Hitler.

I wont advise people to avoid 'Unknown' - it's not worth the effort of getting worked up over. Instead I invite you to think about what's gone wrong with Liam Neeson's career.