By Jeff Swindoll Feb 1, 2007, 15:58 GMT
“Trust no one. Fear everyone.”
Unknown is really quite a good little thriller. The roles are well acted and there’s a great deal of suspense.
Several men find themselves locked in a warehouse with no memory of how they got there. They also don’t know who they are. Some of them are good guys and some are bad guys, but with no memory how can they tell which they are?
A man in a blue jean jacket (Jim Caviezel) stirs from his position on the floor of the warehouse. He’s stunned and groggily looks around him and sees the signs that a struggle has taken place. There’s a man (Joe Pantoliano) tied to an office chair, a man (Barry Pepper) in a rancher’s shirt, a man (Greg Kinnear) with a broken nose, and a man (Jeremy Sisto) that is handcuffed to an overhead rail. All of the other men are passed out. Blue jean jacket hears a phone ringing and runs to find it; the person on the other end says that they’ll be back to the warehouse by sundown.
This is all very confusing to blue jean since he has no idea who he is, he only has snatches of memory. The other men rouse and they too do not know who they are or what is going on. What they do discover is that there’s been a kidnapping and that two of their numbers are those that have been kidnapped and the rest are the kidnappers. Yet none of them know who is who thanks to a canister (that was stored in the warehouse) accidentally releasing a chemical that causes amnesia.
They also find that they warehouse is like a fortress and they cannot get out. Meanwhile, the wife of the kidnapped man (Bridget Moynahan) has dropped the ransom in the prescribed location and the ringleader of the kidnappers (Peter Stormare) has retrieved it and is heading back to the hideout to dispose of the witnesses and the police are trying to pick up his trail. The men have to figure out who is who and who to trust before the others return at sunset to kill two of them to hide the evidence, but which two?
Unknown is really quite a good little thriller. It had a very short theatrical run before finally making it to DVD. This is somewhat surprising considering the roster of familiar faces from television and film. The roles are well acted and there’s a great deal of suspense since we, the viewer, have no idea who exactly are the good guy and who are the bad guys of the men that are in the warehouse.
There are various twists and turns as both we and the men have various flashbacks that could go either way, meaning that they could be the kidnapped or the kidnapper. Part of the fun is trying to figure out what is going on before the characters figure it out. Genre fans will recognize David Selby, of Dark Shadows fame, as the police chief attempting to round up the kidnappers.
Just when you thought that the situation had come to a conclusion and you’ve figured things out the filmmakers try and throw you one more curve ball. This felt like an attempt at a bit of a twist ending that did surprise me, but I don’t know that it was entirely necessary. Whatever the case, this little twist ending did surprise me so I do suppose that it did its job.
Unknown is presented in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Special features include 8 minutes of deleted or extended scenes.
All in all I found Unknown to be a solid film that has a cast of familiar faces. Since it was given a skimpy theatrical run, it’s good that it can now be discovered at your local DVD rental store.
Unknown is now available at Amazon. As of yet, there is not a release date for the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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