A man wakes up in a locked storage facility of some sort with four other men still unconscious around him in various states of restraint, injury or both. A phone rings and he answers it to find a man asking about the hostages and saying they will return soon. The man cannot remember anything before he woke up here and, as the others come-to, it transpires that they are in the same boat, with no memory of who they are or how they came to be there. A newspaper in the area confirms that at least two of the four have been kidnapped making the others kidnappers by default. The group try and ignore this and figure a way out of the building, but the tension over who is who doesn't go away. Meanwhile, many miles away, the police prepare a trap at a ransom drop off in a busy bus station.
The trailer sold this one to me. I was watching my LoveFilm copy of The Nines and was about to fast-forward the trailers when this one grabbed me. The idea didn't jump at me as being particularly original but did seem to offer the potential for contained tension and thrills and accordingly I decided to get it at some point as well. The opening of the film does play very much like the trailer and mostly it managed to carry the mystery for quite a while with a pacey film. Problem is that, as it goes along, the limitations of the story start to come out and it doesn't ring true as often as i would have liked. When it is essentially men stressed and shouting in an unknown location with an unknown threat over some of them it works well but as it moves along it loses power.
Mostly this starts as the memories start to come back because, even as some start to figure out they may be behind the crime, their action do not change significantly. I understand the early, disorientated sense of group loyalty but I was looking for the script to do more with the hearts of the characters as the threat approaches and individuals having instincts more along the self-preservation route. Maybe I'm a cynic but I think that man can get a lot uglier than these ones did. These weaknesses are only really cracks though but they do suggest flaws in the writing and these come to light later when some of the twists are just dropped in and feel like a twist for the sake of it. The best twists fool the audience and make us re-examine what had gone before - for example Sixth Sense or Usual Suspects but in Unknown's case it just seems a bit dropped in out of nowhere for the sake of it and I didn't think the film benefited from that final twist.
Despite the weaknesses in the script I thought the main cast were mostly very good. Caviezel, Pepper and Kinnear are the three main players and all work off one another well. Pantoliano and Sisto have smaller roles but do reasonably well even if, as a Six Feet Under fan, I could not help but feel Sisto offered more than the film used. Outside of the locked room the performances are less urgent and more open and are not as engaging as a result. Stormare churns out yet another uninspired villain while Moynahan, Mulkey and others all move the external narrative along which is pretty much all the film asks of them.
Unknown is a good little thriller - the sort of thing that would make a good rental for a Friday night. It is far from perfect though and cracks appear as it goes along as the script doesn't do enough with the character and instead seems more concern with just generating twists at the end, meaning the gripping effect of the trailer and the opening twenty minutes is not sustained across the whole film. This makes the lack of wider success understandably but even still it should do better on DVD and on cable television.
The trailer sold this one to me. I was watching my LoveFilm copy of The Nines and was about to fast-forward the trailers when this one grabbed me. The idea didn't jump at me as being particularly original but did seem to offer the potential for contained tension and thrills and accordingly I decided to get it at some point as well. The opening of the film does play very much like the trailer and mostly it managed to carry the mystery for quite a while with a pacey film. Problem is that, as it goes along, the limitations of the story start to come out and it doesn't ring true as often as i would have liked. When it is essentially men stressed and shouting in an unknown location with an unknown threat over some of them it works well but as it moves along it loses power.
Mostly this starts as the memories start to come back because, even as some start to figure out they may be behind the crime, their action do not change significantly. I understand the early, disorientated sense of group loyalty but I was looking for the script to do more with the hearts of the characters as the threat approaches and individuals having instincts more along the self-preservation route. Maybe I'm a cynic but I think that man can get a lot uglier than these ones did. These weaknesses are only really cracks though but they do suggest flaws in the writing and these come to light later when some of the twists are just dropped in and feel like a twist for the sake of it. The best twists fool the audience and make us re-examine what had gone before - for example Sixth Sense or Usual Suspects but in Unknown's case it just seems a bit dropped in out of nowhere for the sake of it and I didn't think the film benefited from that final twist.
Despite the weaknesses in the script I thought the main cast were mostly very good. Caviezel, Pepper and Kinnear are the three main players and all work off one another well. Pantoliano and Sisto have smaller roles but do reasonably well even if, as a Six Feet Under fan, I could not help but feel Sisto offered more than the film used. Outside of the locked room the performances are less urgent and more open and are not as engaging as a result. Stormare churns out yet another uninspired villain while Moynahan, Mulkey and others all move the external narrative along which is pretty much all the film asks of them.
Unknown is a good little thriller - the sort of thing that would make a good rental for a Friday night. It is far from perfect though and cracks appear as it goes along as the script doesn't do enough with the character and instead seems more concern with just generating twists at the end, meaning the gripping effect of the trailer and the opening twenty minutes is not sustained across the whole film. This makes the lack of wider success understandably but even still it should do better on DVD and on cable television.