Unknown

It has been fair­ly well doc­u­ment­ed that the Hol­ly­wood bad guy – like the worst kind of shell-neck­laced, ruck­sack-tot­ing, dri­v­el-gush­ing gap-year stu­dent – has moved about a bit over the last 50 years. From humour­less Brits, to cru­el, mous­tached Ger­mans, to Cold War Rus­sians, to desert-dwelling Arabs, bad­dies have moved with the times, always mir­ror­ing the polit­i­cal cli­mate in which the film was made.

Unknown, how­ev­er, marks a chang­ing point in a rather more inter­est­ing trend; the cause of con­flict. Where­as once the forces of good and evil fought over world dom­i­na­tion, mon­ey and – in the case of James Bond – a heady mix of sex and gad­gets, recent films have start­ed to take a more eco­log­i­cal approach to their drama.

Ever since the 1990s and the first Gulf War, film ​‘bad­dies’ have been plot­ting evil schemes to con­trol the world’s sup­ply of oil, or so-called ​‘black gold’. Lat­ter­ly, the stock­pil­ing or own­er­ship of water has been fought over by Hollywood’s arche­types. How­ev­er, Jaume Collet-Serra’s film is one of those rare things – an all-out, gun-tot­ing thriller in which the glob­al sup­ply of food is at the heart of the action.

Which all makes Unknown sound rather clev­er­er than it is. For, despite hav­ing an admirable cast, a cou­ple of good explo­sions and a rather com­pul­sive plot, the film is made fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed by the cast­ing. Fifty-nine year-old, con­crete-limbed giant Liam Nee­son is mar­ried to the 33-year-old blonde god­dess Jan­u­ary ​‘Bet­ty Drap­er’ Jones? Imme­di­ate­ly even the most opti­mistic man in the cin­e­ma can spot that some­thing rather unlike­ly is going on.

So, when Nee­son awak­ens from a coma, brought on by a rather watery traf­fic inci­dent, to dis­cov­er that anoth­er man has stolen his iden­ti­ty and even his wife is pre­tend­ing to have nev­er met him, we in the audi­ence aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly sure that he has the right end of the stick either. When Nee­son claims to be 45, we all but cart him off to the asy­lum ourselves.

If you’re in the mar­ket for yet anoth­er Bourne-esque thriller about iden­ti­ty, mem­o­ry, crime, spies, assas­sins, inter­na­tion­al cor­rup­tion and sexy female dri­vers then knock your­self out. If this all sounds rather like déjà vu, then con­sid­er your­self one step ahead of the game.