Dir. Jaume Collet-Serra , UK / Germany / France/Canada/Japan/USA, 2011, 113 mins
Cast: Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger
Review by Carol Allen
This is a good piece of commercial entertainment, a thriller which holds the attention and whose twists and turns are satisfyingly unexpected.
The premise of the story is the nightmarishly effective one of a man who loses his identity to someone else and begins to therefore question his sanity, while trying at the same time to prove he is who he believes he is. Dr. Martin Harris (Neeson) wakes up in hospital after a car accident in Berlin , where he is visiting for an international conference and finds that his wife (January Jones) doesn’t recognize him and another man (Aidan Quinn) has assumed his identity. With no passport or other documentation, the authorities refuse to believe his story. He is also being pursued by mysterious assassins and finds himself on the run with his life in danger.
Harris’s situation is kicked off by a very impressive car crash. Neeson, who is hardly ever off the screen throughout the film, has the power and the physical stature to hold the whole thing together convincingly and Kruger gives effective support as the illegal immigrant taxi driver, who saves him from the crash and is then reluctantly persuaded to help him. All the action stuff is very well done and there is a lot of it. Quinn doesn’t have a great part as the other Martin Green but what he has to do he does well, as does Jones as Martin’s wife. As the film was shot in Germany, much of it in Berlin itself, it also gives us the benefit of rich supporting performances from the wonderful Bruno Ganz as a former Stasi officer turned private investigator and Sebastian Koch as Martin’s professor colleague in Berlin. Plus a dramatically strong contribution from Frank Langella as the man who holds the key to the mystery of Martin’s lost identity.
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