The question of who's who fails to excite

By Jules Quartly
STAFF REPORTER
Friday, Dec 29, 2006, Page 16

PHOTOS COURTESY OF APPLAUSE

"Who are you? Who the fuck are you?" are the first words spoken by the main protagonist in Unknown, a puzzling thriller but not in the way its director Simon Brand intended. In a movie about identity and forgetting you need a selective memory for the plot to work and there are too many mistakes in its conception to suspend disbelief and enjoy the twists and turns.

Much of the action is set in a dilapidated warehouse, in the desert, where Jim Caviezel's character regains consciousness to find one guy strapped to a chair and another, who has been shot, handcuffed to a railing. Two more men appear soon after. Some mysterious gas that causes retrograde amnesia has knocked them all out, so they are able to function but cannot remember who they are or what happened. Conveniently, none of the characters are carrying ID. Or else they forget to look for it. Though they have tools and two phones they are unable to get out of the warehouse.

The characters then discover that some of them are kidnappers and responsible for the situation they find themselves in while the others are victims. Since they don't know who's who they cannot trust each other. As an existential problem it's fairly interesting and similar in some aspects to Sartre's No Exit or a play by Samuel Beckett. Since they have no memories, they are clean slates. The situation, however artificially contrived, asks these questions of identity: Is it the product of experience? A result of nature? Or do you choose who you want to be at every moment?

Who are you? Who cares anyway?

A better script and someone who was not a first-time director may have nibbled away at these eternal questions more effectively. Instead there is pointless action. The characters constantly fight with each other and barely a moment goes by when they are not shouting at each other. It's as if the director is afraid the audience will lose interest if there's no noise and guns going off. Instead of building on the claustrophobia of entrapment in the warehouse, a connected element is introduced and at times we follow a ritual cops-chase-kidnappers story that crosses the US.

Film Notes: Unknown Directed by: Simon Brand Starring: Jim Caviezel (Jean Jacket), Greg Kinnear (Broken Nose), Joe Pantoliano (Bound Man), Barry Pepper (Rancher Shirt), Jeremy Sisto (Handcuffed Man), Bridget Moynahan (Eliza Coles) Taiwan Release: Today Running time: 90 minutes

On a positive note the B-list actors are competent and do a reasonable job. There are points where black humor elicits a few laughs from the audience. But these highlights cannot overcome the overall impression of an ill-conceived idea, so-so action sequences and disbelief. The use of flashbacks, as the characters regain their memories, was utterly predictable.

The film borrows heavily from Memento, with nods to Quentin Tarantino and Reservoir Dogs, but whereas the originals engage the imagination and are satisfying on many levels, this anemic imitation is full of cheap frills that fail to please. It's no wonder Unknown played at so few theaters in the US and quickly became a video rental shelf filler. The surprise ending is that other critics have been kinder about the movie.