User Reviews

UNKNOWN (2006) **1/2 James Caviezel, Greg Kinnear, Bridget Moynahan, Joe Pantoliano, Barry Pepper, Jeremy Sisto, Peter Stormare. Mark Boone Junior. (Dir: Simon Brand)

Low-rent pulp fiction: "The Usual Suspects" meets "Reservoir Dogs"

Five men find themselves slowly awakening from a chemical leak and discover they are more or less imprisoned in a grimy warehouse in the middle of nowhere with little recollection of how they got there, and more importantly who they are. So begins the somewhat clever yet overtly familiar slice of low-rent pulp fiction from novice screenwriter Matthew Waynee and director Brand.

Among the quintet of disgruntled alpha males are Caviezel whose character seems the most central and his jigsaw memory slowly puts into place if he is a victim or a criminal; Kinnear is a snarky no-nonsense type with a quick temper; Pantoliano showcases his usual brand of loud-mouth knuckleheadedness; Pepper is the more calculating type wavering on the fence to whose allegiance he should stick with to remain alive; Sisto is a bloodied mess handcuffed and the more-or-less distaff, scruffy version of Tim Roth's "Mr. Orange" in "Reservoir Dogs" (which the film emulates with echoes of "The Usual Suspects" and for its nasty set piece, "Saw").

What the five do know is that they have only a few hours to determine who is who and what happened before the main thug (veteran bad dude Stormare as the brains of the outfit for the kidnapping of two businessmen in a ransom scheme) arrives to finish the job.

For the most part the twisty-turny plotting and acerbic dialogue crackle like a teetering FM station trying to get a solid connection with occasional breaks of clarity and the direction is tight enough in its claustrophobic storytelling with MTV-style flashback editing and camera-work by Luis Carballar & Paul Trejo and Steve Yedlin, respectively.

By the film's knotty series of endings is a tad clunky and some of the acting to that point is uneven (well some of the actors don't get enough screen time – to wit Sisto's bleeding stuck pig character) but for those who like the noir with a nice twinge of flavor by all means check it out. The others can relax if they've seen any similar genres in the last decade.

First of all, I am so SICK of all the comparisons to SAW???!!! I totally get the comparisons to RESERVOIR DOGS, MEMENTO, and THE USUAL SUSPECTS but come on, SAW is a horror movie with a bunch of gore and mindless torture. This movie is NOT anywhere near that realm, so STOP already!!! I never saw CUBE so I have no idea about that comparison.

Some of the dialogues can come across as a bit hokey at first glance, especially when Pepper's character is trying to keep Caviezel's character encouraged. Some of the editing and writing are a wee bit choppy and shaky, but after my second viewing of the movie, things made more sense and seemed smoother.

It doesn't necessarily unfold in reverse quite the same way as MEMENTO did, but there are lots of flashbacks, and all the answers lie within those flashbacks. There is a "whodunit" element like in THE USUAL SUSPECTS, and a crime-caper gone terribly opposite of what was planned, and lot of arguing and bickering in a claustrophobic warehouse setting like DOGS. I'd like to add that there is a certain plot twist in this story that struck me as similar to SUICIDE KINGS, but I won't give it away, except that the whole thing was one surprise after another and that you never know who is the true mastermind of an evil plot.

Barry Pepper, Jim Caviezel, Joe Pantoliano, Jeremy Sisto, Greg Kinnear and Peter Stormare all give nice performances. The story is intriguing and definitely impossible to predict outcome wise.

At first some might wonder why 5 guys would suffer memory loss to such an extreme. I thought the idea was far-fetched when I first heard about the film, but it's believable here being that the memory loss doesn't last thru the whole movie, and that it was caused by some inhaled toxin.

All in all a very good film. Forget the idiotic comparisons to SAW and just give it a try. It's a solid 9 out of 10 at least.

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.

In a remotely located, locked warehouse, somewhere on the low desert, perhaps in southern California or near there, several men gradually awaken, as if from a toxic slumber or coma, with nearly total amnesia for their identities and past events. It is obvious to all that they are imprisoned here. As they regain their wits (indicating that there is no permanent damage to their ability to form new memories), they find few if any clues to help them understand how they have gotten to this place and into this predicament, or how they are interconnected.

One man is wounded, has lost blood, and is shackled by one wrist to a steel banister. These guys do not for a second trust each other: everyone is suspicious that other members of this little band are perpetrators of the predicament in which they collectively find themselves.

Flashbacks slowly permit the viewer's construction of a context for comprehending the circumstances in which these men find themselves, but the brief glimpses we see of past events are not only ephemeral but often shadowy, and different images are seen by different characters, making the assemblage of a coherent picture nearly impossible for them, given the level of distrust among them, and, thus, a decided reticence to share information. Outsiders begin to call in on the telephone, but these contacts raise more questions than they answer. What's going on here? Who are the good guys, and the bad? And over what issues are they in conflict?.

This compelling whodunwhat drama dishes out bracingly realistic imagery and conjures circumstances that are plain scary. This is Sartre's "No Exit" redux, but with several more players, not to mention more menace. I can't say any more about the plot without being a spoilsport.

If you like suspense and paranoia-wracked proceedings (if, for example, you liked Darren Aronofsky's film "Pi," Soderbergh's "Kafka," the Nolan Brothers' "Memento," or Christian Bale's cadaveresque presence in "The Machinist"), you'll definitely enjoy this unsettling movie. The fine cast includes James Caviezel, Greg Kinnear, Joe Pantoliano, Barry Pepper, Jeremy Sisto and Peter Stormare. This is a successful directorial debut for Simon Brand. My grades: 7.5/10, B+ (Seen on 11/21/06).

Gathering up DVDs to trade in,I was surprised to discover that I had somehow picked up 2 DVDs of this interesting-sounding Neo- Noir!,which led to me deciding that it was time to uncover the unknown.

The plot:

Waking up in a locked abandoned warehouse,a man finds himself surrounded by 1 man tied up to a chair,another has been shot & handcuffed to a wall,whilst 2 others are lying on the floor badly beaten.As he tries to piece his memory back together,a phone begins to ring.

Picking up the phone,the man is told by a stranger that he will arrive at the warehouse in a few hours time.Putting the phone down,the other 4 men start to wake up.With none of them having any memory of how they got here,they each decide to team up,so that they can break out of the warehouse.Whilst preparing their escape plan,some fragments of memory start to return.

View on the film:

Whilst the screenplay by Matthew Waynee is a bit too open on its rift of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs,Waynee offers an excellent mix of tense psychological thrills and gritty Neo-Noir.For the first half of the title,Waynee makes each of the 5 guys Film Noir loners whose dark pasts they each secretly want to stay forgotten.Keeping the movie limited to a handful of characters,Waynee superbly shows the gang splitting themselves in groups,with the ones who were lying on the ground believing that they were the "good guys" whilst the 2 handcuffed/tied up were the up to no good "baddies"Gradually regaining their memories,Waynee hits each twist with a sharp precision,as each of the guys start to remember whose side they are really on.

Despite filming the flashback fragments in a far too glossy manner,director Simon Brand & cinematographer Steve Yedlin give the movie an excellent burnt-out Film Noir atmosphere.Keeping any light/windows away from the warehouse,Brand and Yedlin grind dry grey,whites & blood reds into the film,which along with brilliantly showing the isolated location that the men are stuck in,also subtly displays the hazy,cloudy memories that all of the group are suffering from.

Reuniting after working together on The Thin Red Line, Jim Caviezel and Barry Pepper each give great performances,with Pepper giving his stranger a nervous sense of loyalty to Caviezel,whilst Caviezel shows his character to be a Film Noir loner,who is desperate to get away from the past which is slowly coming back.Joining Caviezel & Pepper, Joe Pantoliano gives a traditionally great slime ball performance,whilst Greg Kinnear gives a wonderful edgy performance,which plants a seed of doubt into the group,as they start to uncover the unknown.

Well... actually this movie was a pleasant surprise. After reading some of the comments in here i wasn't sure whether this movie was my style or not, but i decided to give it a try... i can honestly say that i'm glad i did. This movie gets you thinking all the way to the end, and there's a lot of unexpected twists along the way. The way this movie makes you "feel" the same way as the characters is very well done. The movie takes place inside an old shutdown factory building or warehouse. The characters wakes up, but can't remember who they are, and the building is sealed off so that it's impossible to get out. No one knows who is who, or even who is the bad guys and who's the good guys, or even if there is any good or bad guys. Every move they make is being watched closely by the other characters, and every time someone does anything that seems a little suspicious, they gets accused of being the bad guys or "on the other side". This makes your mind work hard to figure out who is who, and what's the meaning of this. The movie is a bit slow sometimes, and it's not what i would call a "masterpiece", but it's definitely better than average, and i liked it a lot.

If you like movies that gets you thinking, then i would highly recommend this one. It won't let you down.