She sent me a text message inviting me to a matinee of the latest Liam Neeson thriller. She said my brother and his soon-to-be wife were attending. I sat down and thought about it for a few minutes. Now I'm not the kind of person who usually turns down a free ticket to the cinema. In retrospect, perhaps I should rethink that policy. After all, this policy has brought me face-to-face with such amazing motion pictures as The Da Vinci Code and its horrifying progeny, Angels & Demons.
Of course, I eventually agreed to see Unknown (or Forgotten, as my mother called it). As I previously stated, I was far from thrilled. I saw the trailers. They elicited no reaction from me. Nothing. Not anger, not excitement, not disgust. Seeing the trailers for Unknown was just like staring at a beige wall. You can't get mad at a wall, man. It just exists. But hey, at least I get to see this movie in the comfort of my local cinema's luxurious balcony auditorium. That's gotta count for something, right?
In Unknown, Liam Neeson plays some botanist who is traveling to Berlin with his blow-up doll to speak at a conference about... botany, I assume. He leaves his briefcase at the airport, and upon arriving at a swank hotel with his sentient rubber wife, realizes this mistake. So he hails a cab operated by that German gal who got strangled by Hans Landa. Everything is going swimmingly, until the cab flies off a bridge into the river. The lady cabbie pulls the wounded Michael Collins to shore, and the paramedics revive him.
He wakes up in the hospital with no I.D., recovering from a severe concussion. He tells the doctors who he is, and insists on being released from their care, because his blow-up doll is surely lonely without him. At this point, Neeson is clearly acting unstable, so of course his physician immediately relents to the raving bastard's demands, and Rob Roy is once more loosed upon the streets of Berlin.
You know what's coming, right? Surely you've seen the same trailers. He finds his sex toy, only to discover that it has imprinted on Aiden Quinn, who claims to be the real Liam Neeson. Something's fishy. He starts to wonder if the head wound he suffered in the car accident truly did scramble his brains. Is he who he thinks he is? His "wife" insists that Neeson was never her husband, but she's inflatable, so who knows how reliable her memory is.
It's got to be a conspiracy, dammit! The film never really tries to convince the audience that Liam's really crazy. That's a shame, because at least that tactic might have been mildly interesting. He knows he's not a raving lunatic, so he decides to track down the cabbie who saved his life. So...
I don't want to talk about this movie. I absolutely do not want to continue with this charade. Instead of attempting to recap the entire plot, which would not only be boring, I'm just going to skip to the end.
As it turns out, Liam Neeson and the blow-up doll aren't really a married couple. No, they're actually deep-cover assassins, and they were hired to kill some brilliant scientist who has developed a new variety of corn that can flourish in the most inhospitable environments on the planet. The reason why this scientist has to go: he plans on giving his creation to the world, instead of patenting it himself and making a fucking fortune. Yes, our scientist is a true humanitarian. And that means he must die.
The big plan involves blowing up a hotel suite where a large reception is being held celebrating the scientist's selflessness. Also in attendance is a Middle Eastern prince who has been the target of a previous assassination attempt. This way, the world will believe that the prince is the real target, and the assassins will escape with the top-secret corn formula, and their bosses will make more money than God.
Unfortunately for the bad guys, Liam Neeson no longer wants to play their reindeer games. Spending a little time with Diane Kruger will do that to a guy. He decides to crash their party, and the big action-packed climax occurs.
When it's clear that the operation has gone tits-up, the blow-up doll realizes that blowing up the hotel probably isn't the best idea, considering her cover has been blown. Bad for business, you see. So she spends the remainder of her role limply attempting to disarm the bomb, but it turns out she's not very good at defusing explosive devices. She blows up. A lot. Luckily the sheriff from Leap Of Faith evacuated the hotel in the nick of time, saving everybody that matters. Oh, and he killed Aiden Quinn.
Our film ends with the German scientist unleashing his super corn upon an unsuspecting world, where it quickly mutates, becoming self-aware and eradicating the entire human race. Except for Liam Neeson and Diane Kruger. They learned to live in peace with their delicious corn overlords, and a new era of understanding began, where man and corn would live together in perfect harmony. I was actually quite moved by that brave conclusion.
Wait, I think I may have hallucinated that last bit. Oh, now I remember. Neeson and Kruger just skipped town together. That was boring. Holy shit, the entire movie was boring. I've never been so completely detached from a theatrical experience in my life. There was not a single moment in Unknown that engaged me in any way. The sheer stupidity and emptiness of this movie gave me a migraine. By the time the credits rolled, I felt like my head was going to crack open, and a fetal Liam Neeson was going to spill out onto the carpet, rambling about super corn and international conspiracies.
How boring is Unknown? Here's an example: Frank Langella is introduced midway through the narrative as Liam Neeson's old scientist buddy. Liam left a message on his pal's answering machine back in the U.S., and naturally, Frankie immediately books a flight to Berlin. Because he's concerned. He tracks down our hero, and basically explains the entire plot to his addled mind.
Langella is actually Neeson's handler, and as soon as he went M.I.A., Aiden Quinn stepped in to pinch-hit for Darkman in their big assassination game. And since Neeson had to go and fuck up Skeletor's carefully crafted plan, he was now expendable. The big confrontation takes place in a parking garage, and Neeson gets the upper hand on his old fishing buddy with an assist from Diane Kruger. Skeletor's rape van is sent plunging down the side of the building, and the man himself just sits there, struggling to stay awake long enough for the director to call "cut".
Honestly, even Frank Langella couldn't muster anything beyond "I need a nap" in his death scene. It's pathetic. And it's just one example of the cinematic quaalude that is Unknown. Shit, I was struggling to stay awake during this mess. The last time (the only time) I ever fell asleep during a movie was when I saw Meet The Parents. But I was incredibly tired on that occassion. This time, I wasn't even groggy when I sat down to watch Unknown.
Nobody is committed to this movie. Liam Neeson sleepwalks through his central performance. Diane Kruger is merely existing, managing to stay in frame but little else. January Jones, who plays the blow-up doll, has got to be the most vapid actor I have ever seen in a major theatrical motion picture. Her big blue eyes are disturbingly empty. There's no emotion in her performance. I know people think she's attractive, but I do not find inanimate objects to be sexy. How does this woman exist? Is she capable of feeding herself, or do other, less stupid people have to chew up her food and regurgitate it into her open maw, like a baby bird? Is she even human?
This movie was a "Dark Castle" production. Does anybody remember when "Dark Castle" was founded by Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis? Their original game plan was to produce remakes of old William Castle movies. They made two, House On Haunted Hill & Thirteen Ghosts. Then they abandoned that idea to create brand new properties. Properties like Ghost Ship & Gothika. And the House Of Wax remake, directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who also directed Unknown.
The House Of Wax remake wasn't bad, actually. It was more entertaining than it had any right to be. His 2009 film Orphan, also a "Dark Castle" production, was pretty entertaining, too. I mean, it's a movie about a Russian midget pretending to be a little girl, and she murders Peter Sarsgaard. That's fucking weird. And fucking entertaining.
So what happened with Unknown? I don't know. This isn't a horror movie. It's supposed to be a thriller, I suppose. But it's not remotely thrilling, so it fails in that regard. What is it? Dull. Dreadfully dull. It reminds me of a Monty Python sketch. The "vocational guidance counselor" sketch. In that sketch, an unremarkable man yearns for excitement. He's a banker, and he finds his current career to be mind-numbingly dull. What does he want to do for a living? He wants to be a lion tamer. Of course. But after the vocational guidance counselor explains to him exactly what a lion is, the banker decides that maybe he'd be better off sticking with his current career. In the end, he's perfectly fine with being dull.
And that's Unknown. It acts like it wants to try something new and exciting. Something dangerous. But in the end, it's content with being a simple, mediocre, dreadfully dull motion picture. That's a fucking sin.
And as a final insult, my experience in the luxurious balcony auditorium was less than stellar. The cheese fries I ate to distract myself from the terrible cinematic experience gave me food poisoning, and I was horrifically sick for two days. That's what I get for seeing Unknown.
Dwayne McDuffie died a few days ago. This saddens me. If you don't know who Dwayne McDuffie is, he's the guy who created "Milestone Media" in 1993. "Milestone Media" published many titles through DC Comics, including Icon, Hardware, Static, & Blood Syndicate, which all featured a predominantly black cast of characters.
I loved the "Milestone" books back in the day. I read all of the titles, but developed a particular fondness for Static and Icon. I had never before read comic books that told stories like this. Despite some of the fantastic elements, the characters felt more real to me than Superman or Captain America. Their world felt gritty and dangerous. The dialogue had a natural flow. I was enthralled. Unfortunately, I lost all of my comic books in a house fire in 1997, and never really collected again after that. But I always remembered the "Milestone" titles.
McDuffie also worked on the animated series Justice League Unlimited, which existed in the same Bruce Timm-created universe established in previous series Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series. The show was fantastic, and McDuffie was heavily involved with 69 out of 91 of the series' completed episodes. His fingerprints were all over the show. He also helped develop his "Milestone" comic Static into an animated series called Static Shock, which ran four seasons.
McDuffie's final assignment was writing the animated adaptation of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's masterpiece comic series All-Star Superman. It was released on DVD and Blu-Ray the day after he died at the age of 49.
Dwayne McDuffie's incredible talent coupled with his willingness to have frank and open discussions about the dire state of the comic book industry made him a special man. He's left behind a fine legacy with his work, but he had so much more to do. I'm going to miss him.
P.S. - There will be a review of Drive Angry sometime in the near future. And maybe something else. Who the hell knows?
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