Blackout

While undeniably containing many similarities to Saw II and Reservoir Dogs, Unknown boasts a unique (if contrived) central idea that lacks the necessary anchoring in reality to make it believable. Five men, all of them battered to some degree, awake in an abandoned mine (or refinery) with no memory of who they are or how they got there. As the story unfolds, they discover that two of them are hostages, which means the other three are bad guys. Even worse, the bad guys' accomplices are returning from collecting the ransom money to put a hole in the hostage's heads.

It's an intriguing premise, and writer Matthew Waynee touches all bases while not quite managing to exploit the opportunity for suspense inherent in the plot. Despite its short length (85 minutes), the time doesn't pass that quickly, even though the film is never boring. Everyone is understandably stressed and shouts a lot and they're all generally unpleasant to one another, so we don't develop any particular attachment to their characters. Given this, and the fact that there are some glaring plot holes (these guys don't have wallets?) the film falls short of its potential by some distance.

The cast is surprisingly good for what looks like a low budget effort, and they all perform well, and the story will keep you watching to the end to find out just who is who but, ultimately, Waynee adds just one unnecessary twist too many, leaving the suspicion that he wants to show us how clever he is as much as he wants to tell us a story.

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.

A man wakes up in an abandoned warehouse. Groggily getting to his feet, he sees several other men, some laying prone, one hanging from handcuffs, one tied to a chair. The man has no recollection of who he is, how he got there, who the other men are, nothing. No recollection other than that he just woke up.

Unknown is a solid, twisty caper/thriller, about a kidnapping that somehow goes wrong; we pick up the action the same time that our protagonist (or is he?) does, so we have to piece things together with him. And, as it turns out, with the others in the warehouse, each of whom has suffered short-term memory loss. Who is "good," who is "bad," and where the heck are they? The man can't get out of the warehouse (there are bars on the windows, and the only door to the outside is electronically controlled), and they have limited means with which to defend themselves. But what if some of them are the ones against whom they should be defending? What then? One thing I liked about this movie, above all else, really, was that whatever did happen, it was neither blindly predictable nor completely implausible. No one trusts anyone, really, but no one completely mistrusts others, either.

Helping matters is the wonderful, flawless cast, including Jim Caviezel (as the initial waker-upper), Barry Pepper, Greg Kinnear, Joe Pantoliano, Jeremy Sisto, Chris Mulkey, and Peter Stormare. Everyone is dead on; there are no hams this time around. Everything just plain feels right, and what's more, not one character is Good or Bad. Sure, you wake up with Jim Caviezel, and you get the idea he's Good, but he doesn't always act Good. If that makes sense.

See, at no point did I feel I comfortably knew what the hey hey was going on. There were feints and double crosses, but not so haphazardly that they lose meaning. We've all seen movies like that, movies that are completely wrapped up in being clever and self-important, so they managed to write themselves into a corner and therefore make no freaking sense.

Unknown makes sense all along but still surprises, and that's saying something. A lot better than you might imagine it being, based on its title.

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.

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!!!