Unknown movie discussion

Okay, let’s talk about movie titles. You’ve worked on a screenplay and a movie for more than a year and all you can come up with is Unknown? It gives lame bloggers a lot of room for puns though, I cringe at these titles in my head.

So Unknown was pretty cool… but it could have been the best thriller of the year.

If someone went back and cleaned up a bunch of the plot holes  and the length shortened, this could be a great movie. It follows playing Dr. Martin Harris who receives brain trauma from a car accident while on business trip with his wife. He wakes up to find that everyone doesn’t believe he is Harris and even his wife claims he doesn’t exist.

The rest of the story is a labrynth of cool plots points that seem to be aiming toward making the movie a bit too long. I’d point out these weird mistakes, but that would ruin the fun.

There are  a lot of close-ups and camera angles that are a bit too “there” for a person who is looking for them. Obviously the director assumed he’d be dealing with an audience who didn’t really want to think much about what was going on.

He was probably right.

Actually, I will mention one part because I’m only saying what people can already see in the trailer: Why does Harris go talk to the cab driver, walk away, and then return to her in a different scene with not much more accomplished? Obviously if she was the only one who placed you and your wife together, wouldn’t you refuse to leave her presence until she proved your case?

Regardless of my protests, the movie’s action is pretty damn good. They have some of the best set pieces I’ve seen in years. One such instance is where Harris is flying down the road in a car while the killer is driving along side him. He can’t pull into the other lane because he’d die in traffic. He can’t pull into the correct lane because the killer is blocking his path, a path which is blocked by an oncoming train. The scene is given time for tension to build.

It is almost Spielbergesque. He was the best at adding element on top of element to build tension in an action scene. Remember the T-Rex on the car in J-park? First the Dinosaur came, then it flipped the car, then, out of nowhere, a cliff is there for them to fall off of, which wasn’t there in the first place. It just magically appears. (Look if you don’t believe me, Spielberg admitted he just adds stuff and doesn’t expect the audience to notice.) Or, when Indiana is fighting on top of the tank which is on a dooms-day path off the edge of a cliff.  You’ve got the tank, the people trying to kill him, then the edge of the cliff.

Also, theres a great scene where Harris is gettin’ his punch on with a bad dude and tackles his through a wall to the couple next door who just had sex.

There is also a scene where some guy comes in and explains the whole story to the main character, but really it is just exposition for story sake. Why not just write the story a bit better and let the audience decide?

All-in-all good stuff though. Director Jaume Collet-Serra has a pretty cool movie under his belt now.

B+/5

-Collin