Film Review: Unknown (Blu-Ray) - and The Tourist, in one half sentence

Unknown is everything what The Tourist probably tried to be: It's elegant, suspenseful and filmed 50 years earlier could have fit in seamlessly with the best of Hitchcock's thrillers. Liam Neeson leads the cast as Dr. Martin Harris, a Biologist visiting a conference in Berlin with his wife (rising star January Jones from Mad Men and X-Men: First Class). After an accident he loses his short-term memory and nothing is the same anymore. The whole film takes place in Berlin and was shot on location and in the Babelsberg studios. It manages to keep you interested at all times and moves at a good pace while keeping you guessing what is actually going on. Other than Neeson and Jones, the cast includes the German actors Diane Kruger (playing a woman from Bosnia - you may remember her from Inglorious Basterds, the two National Treasure flicks, Troy and The Piano Player), Bruno Ganz (actually Swiss, but led the cast in many German films from Wim Wenders' classic The American Friend to Downfall - Der Untergang)  and Sebastian Koch (The Loves of Others) as well as Aidan Quinn and Frank Langhella. The film is reminiscent of some of Hitchcock's work such as North by Northwest or Torn Curtain, but in a modern packaging. 7/10