Mentes En Blanco

I saw "UNKNOWN" yesterday in a midnight special screening and it was surprisingly good! In deed, this one is a real beauty among so many mystery, psychological thrillers hitting the cinemas in the last years.

This movie is a little bit of "SAW", a little bit of "IDENTITY", a little bit of "RESERVOIR DOGS" spiced with some tiny little pieces of "CUBE" - so far, so good and so anticipating. BUT: in many movies of this kind there is a story with some huge holes in the plot and a final twist at the end which may be unexpected and surprising - but after some minutes you feel a little bit strange about it because the final twist being of some strange coincidence.

"UNKNOWN" is better: the only coincidence you will have to swallow is right in the beginning of the movie, that there is a chemical gas which is strong enough to wipe out the complete memory of five people (including their whole identity!) for some hours, but fails to kill one of them although "death" being one of its side effects.

Under this premise the rest of the story is fully logical and surprisingly clever. And it makes the best out of the fact, that in many scenes the audience is better informed about the real identity of the characters than the characters themselves.

And the end is just stunning: when the final credits hit the screen you have seen many final twists and you know everything about what was going on in the chemical factory, but you do not know all about the motive force of any character. In fact, 24 hours after seeing this movie I still try to find out what is my personal opinion about Jean Jacket and his role in this game.

...and a movie which is worth to think about more than 10 minutes is always worth a watch. Enjoy this ride!!!

A group of strangers waked up in the middle of no where.With no name,no identity and no memories.The awkward situation pushed them into a kind of bizarre symbiosis.They have to work together to figure out a way to escape and improvise their next move based on their limited recurrent memories.Sounds like a unique and mind-blowing set-up,but the flick never really reached its expectation.

Matthew Waynee did put some surprising twist at the end of the movie,but since some of the characters are not built-up through the whole movie.I didn't pick up any crumbs along the journey,if there is any.In the end the identity revealing session is just like a teacher's roll calling.You,you,and you should play the bad guys.And nobody should break the rules,my stick would see to it.

"Unknown" is the type of film that looks brilliant before, during and even shortly after watching it. The names of the actors appearing during the opening credits are fantastic, the basic premise sounds awesome and instantly reminds you of a handful of other cinema classics, there's an almost constant high level of action & mystery and the director maintains a fast pacing and regularly provides new plot twists! This film actually contains all the aspects you hope to see on a big cinema screen, and it isn't until quite a while after finishing "Unknown" before its flaws and shortcomings come to the surface. It sounds rather strange, but by now – only a couple days after my viewing – I can't even remember that many things about "Unknown" that were really original and/or genuinely impressive. In spite of delivering constant thrills and mystery, the only thing I can think of now is how simplistic the story really is and how the script actually reverts to such easy excuses to explain the oddities. If you're planning on seeing "Unknown", I strongly advise to enjoy the wild ride while it lasts and immediately put your mind to other things when the film is over, because if you contemplate too much about what you saw, there's a large chance your opinion will change as well. The film already often gets compared to "Reservoir Dogs" and it's fairly easy to see why. Five rather sinister men are gathered in a secluded desert hangar and it's more than likely that they're all involved in some kind of criminal affair. Slight problem, though ... they suffer from mass-amnesia following an incident or violent struggle and none of them knows whether he is a good guy or a bad guy. One of them is tied down to a chair, one is handcuffed and slowly dying from a gunshot wound, one guy's nose is broken and the last remaining two men are desperately trying to figure out what connects them. As the day passes by, brief flashback and awkward phone calls reveal that the men are involved in a kidnapping and that they are waiting for other accomplices to return to the hangar. But, which of them are kidnappers and which of them are hostages? And, even more importantly, what caused their temporary loss of memory? The amnesia-aspect of the plot is intriguing at first, but it becomes less plausible and definitely sillier as the film evolves. It's a little too hard to believe that the characters don't remember anything about their unusual situation and when the cause of the amnesia is finally revealed, it only comes across as a mildly acceptable excuse. Thanks to the minimum amount of filming locations, "Unknown" does feature quite a bit of suspense and an occasionally claustrophobic atmosphere. The screenplay suffers from the 'one twist too many' syndrome at the end, like so many wannabe intellectual psychological thrillers nowadays, but the writing skills of newcomer Matthew Waynee are definitely promising and hopeful for the future of the genre. The multi-talented cast provides this film with a bigger status than it actually deserves, but they all play their roles with great devotion. Jeremy Sisto's role ("Six Feet Under", "May", Wrong Turn") is sadly the smallest and it hurts to realize he'll probably always remain underrated. Greg Kinnear, Barry Pepper and Jim Caviezel are good in their rather unconventional roles, while Peter Stormare steals the show as the maniacal gangster.

Maybe the critic who wrote (something like) '...written by the smartest kid in film school...' was right--you really need to pay attention to understand the game, the rules and the players.

And just when you believe you've figured it out, yikes, there are more twists.

Solid performances by all players, every one believable in their loss-of-memory-ness.

Several characters transformed with nice arcs that cross, mesh, repel and attract.

Smart clues dropped unexpectedly.

Plus, released to cable partners of IFC (at least in the NYC, NJ and Conn area) and is also available now with video-on-demand service. This makes this nice little film available to many, many more viewers, because the number of theatres listed across the US playing it numbers about one dozen.

From the start of the movie you want to know what is going on! This I think is always a good move! That way you will get drawn in the movie! I love the little twists and turns! For once I didn't have to wait long for something to be revealed! So it didn't get annoying! All the actors did well! All of the men in the building were able to convince me that they could have been as much of a good guy as a bad guy! This makes the movie very compelling! The movie has a nice pace,not to slow but not fast either! Just fast enough to get the story going and slow enough for the viewer to digest the twists! To be honest I didn't expect the great twist at the end! But that made the movie so much better! I understand that people compare "Unknown" to movies like "Saw" and "Reservoir Dogs" because of the similar situations the main characters are in! But that is where the comparison stops! "Unknown" is completely different! And should be judged as an original movie!