Movie review by Greg Carlson

Stiff, sober, and fastidious to the brink of suffocation, Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator” recounts the trial of accused Lincoln assassination abettor Mary Surratt, whose boarding house frequently entertained Confederate sympathizers. Presented as a grave and airless history lesson, far too much time is spent in the stifling makeshift courtroom where the wan accused faced a stacked-deck military tribunal of revenge-minded officers. Redford never gets outside the margins of our worst impressions of the dusty, distant past, and “The Conspirator” grinds methodically through its rigidly chronological, one-thing-at-a-time study of the shortsightedness of a system willing to violate its own principles.

As Michael Phillips has aptly pointed out, the movie filters its point of view through the “wrong character,” testy war hero and reluctant legal defender Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy). As a direct result, the film is misleadingly titled, for Robin Wright’s Mary Surratt remains distant and unknowable from first prison meeting to final gallows drop. Even as the accumulation of reasonable doubt begins to sway the opinion of Unionist Aiken, the audience is given no incentive to sympathize with Surratt. Only briefly, when the bonds of mother love are exploited through daughter Anna (Evan Rachel Wood) and fugitive son John (Johnny Simmons), does Redford graze an opportunity to capitalize on any viewer compassion.

Filmic and television dramatizations of the evening of Abraham Lincoln’s murder number in the dozens, and Redford’s brisk opening act rushes through the template made famous in 1915 by D.W. Griffith in “The Birth of a Nation.” It is the aftermath, and not the details of April 14, 1865 that concerns Redford’s production – a daunting prospect given that scenes of people asking and answering questions in a single room lack the cinematic intensity of images like Booth’s leap to the stage of Ford’s Theatre and his unbelievable horseback escape.

Screenwriter James Solomon has claimed that he wrote “The Conspirator” with no parallels to contemporary United States policy in mind, but this has not stopped critics from linking the film’s release to the government’s decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed by military tribunal. Spending any significant time mulling similarities is a fool’s errand, given the grueling task of slogging through Redford’s long-winded tale and its failure to generate excitement. With a handful of exceptions, including the Tom Robinson trial in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the courtroom drama is among the least visually appealing genres in the movies. Thousands of hours of it floating by weekly on the small screen doesn’t help either.

Solomon, for reasons unknown, deletes several of the most culturally enshrined pronouncements and exclamations associated with the depicted events. Kevin Kline’s heavy, mean Edwin Stanton does not utter “Now he belongs to the ages/angels,” and virtually none of the execution site banter accompanies the climactic scene, including Surratt’s last words “Please don’t let me fall.” Even without the exacting detail demanded by some Lincoln fanatics, the hanging of the condemned shows off Redford’s finest instincts as a filmmaker, but the gripping sequence, like Aiken’s attempts to secure clemency for Surratt, proves too little, too late.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

To call “Hanna” superior to “Sucker Punch” is to damn it with faint praise, though both movies use young females as agents of death, and mean to thrill viewers at the sight of much onscreen mayhem and hand-to-hand combat. The otherwise innocent heroines who headline these features walk the tightrope between prurient eye candy and quasi-empowered changelings. To be sure, Saoirse Ronan is not sexualized with pigtails and schoolgirl uniforms, but “Hanna” acknowledges the child/adult edge – and the notion of a young girl tutored in the art of murder by a father or father figure – previously explored in “Leon: The Professional” and less successfully, “Kick-Ass.”

Growing up in a remote Finnish cabin with caring but haunted dad and CIA “rogue” Erik Heller (Eric Bana, who gets to wear animal skins and business suits, depending on the requirements of the scene), Hanna has been trained from birth in the practices of self-defense and survivalism. The onset of puberty triggers restlessness in the young woman, and papa digs up a signal transmission device that once activated will guide an army of assassins to the front door. The “why” and the “what” are mere prelude to the “how,” although one certainly marvels that any sane human being would flip a switch telling your enemies your exact whereabouts.

Throughout the movie, Wright struggles to find a consistent tone, bouncing between sober reminders that Hanna has been robbed of normal childhood development and tongue-in-cheek showdowns with skinhead goons that send up and celebrate the genre. The introduction of the permissive, vacationing family led by Olivia Williams milks all kinds of comic relief from the brash mouth of saucy daughter Jessica Barden, nearly reprising her role from “Tamara Drewe,” but Wright scarcely knows what to do when the nuclear unit is left to be tortured at the hands of vicious Eurotrash creep Isaacs (Tom Hollander).

Not that it matters much, but Isaacs is enlisted by the sinister Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett), the symbolic wicked stepmother to Hanna’s Cinderella/Little Mermaid/Gretel mash-up. Often happy to embrace the “more is more” school of character construction, Blanchett puts on Armani suits, a severe crimson coiffure, and a ridiculous drawl to complete the portrait of her evil CIA operative, whose desire to kill the Hellers is only matched by her gum-bloodying obsession with oral hygiene.

With its hipster-friendly title design and Chemical Brothers soundtrack, “Hanna” yearns to break its adolescent heroine out of the action movie’s traditional – maybe even old fashioned – constraints, but Wright heartily subscribes to the “Bourne” template established by Doug Liman’s 2002 Ludlum adaptation. Production designer Sarah Greenwood stuffs the frame with as many Brothers Grimm references as possible while Hanna catapults through the colorful international locations en route to learning her origin story.

Frustratingly, “Hanna” alludes to a richer inner life for its title character than the movie provides, and the flimsy soap opera turnabout that casts doubts on our girl’s paternity is disappointingly resolved with a stultifying and tedious computer search montage wholly unworthy of the protagonist. Only slightly better is the climactic derelict amusement park confrontation in which Wiegler emerges from the toothy maw of a fiberglass big bad wolf to do battle with Hanna.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

A thick slice of science fiction time loop ham, “Source Code” serves up a (moderately) thinking person’s action thriller superior to much of its competition. Sure to be embraced by the fanboys and fangirls taken with “Moon,” “Source Code” is the second feature to be capably helmed by Duncan Jones, a filmmaker whose interests in character and emotion appear to outweigh any pressure to depend solely on the mechanics of plot. Even so, both “Moon” and “Source Code” burrow deeply into rigidly machined “wrinkles” that govern narrative.

For gamers, much of the fun to be had in “Source Code” lies in the Sisyphean labor of U.S. Army Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal), a helicopter pilot who awakes to find himself on a Chicago-bound commuter train in the body of another man. Inserted a mere eight minutes prior to a deadly explosion, Stevens must locate the source of the concealed bomb and uncover the identity of its architect, and then share that information with the big brains at the top-secret intelligence operation that provides the movie with its title. Easier said than done, and it is not even easily said.

The disoriented Stevens understandably fails the first eight minute pass of his new mission, but the nature of the brain-teasing plot device allows him to be reinserted as many times as it takes to satisfy (or exhaust, depending on your point of view) the gimmick. Doomed to literally relive the final moments of life, Stevens adapts to the environment, manipulating the variables to assemble more and more of the puzzle with each new trip through the impossible portal. Like the popular “Choose Your Own Adventure” series, or an energized Phil Connors, Stevens makes new choices that lead to new outcomes, not all of them favorable.

Stevens is assisted and abetted by two women. Trained in the Source Code program, Vera Farmiga is a fellow soldier who communicates with Stevens between each “insertion” into the repeated pattern. While these intervening conversations interrupt the possible monotony of the looping cycle, the physical distance between the two – they only interact via video conference – highlights the expositional function of Farmiga as guide and rudder. Michelle Monaghan, playing the supportive love interest/helper for what seems to be at least the tenth time, is Stevens’s seatmate, a passenger unaware of the imminent danger. Her optimistic mien is a welcome contrast to the panicked intensity of Stevens, and adds to the hero’s sense of urgency.

Most critics will not resist comparing “Source Code” to “Groundhog Day” – arguably the time loop movie nonpareil – coupling the reference with some other high concept rollercoaster ride (Jan de Bont’s “Speed” does nicely). When presented with smarts, wit, and attention to detail, the “snap back” structure can achieve a dazzling degree of viewer satisfaction. The Twilight Zone’s classic “Shadow Play” and “Run Lola Run” both make the cut. “Source Code,” however, flirts with but never embraces the fullness of the ethical dilemmas confronting the characters (Stevens inside the “source code” and Jeffrey Wright’s Dr. Rutledge in the “real world”), content to use the time loop as a set of jumper cables for the thrill ride that follows.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Well-meaning but narratively inert drama “The Company Men” opens with a montage of news clips and soundbites announcing the beginnings of the “global financial meltdown” precipitated by all sorts of logic defying banking products that gathered into a perfect storm of toxicity. CEOs lined their pockets while double-checking that golden parachutes had been properly packed, even as rank and file drones saw their jobs slide toward the chopping block. Veteran producer John Wells, known best for duties on “The West Wing” and “ER” despite a lengthy motion picture resume, makes his feature directorial debut to decidedly mixed results.

Cross-cutting among a trio of plotlines, “The Company Men” tracks the tumble of go-getter MBA Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck), among the first to receive a pink slip at the Boston-area shipping corporation where he has toiled for more than a decade. The devoted family man initially refuses to accept the dire reality of his circumstances, but eventually swallows his pride, sells his Porsche, and straps on a tool belt to work with salty brother-in-law Jack (Kevin Costner). Meanwhile, executive Gene McClary (Tommy Lee Jones) questions the ethics of eliminating entire divisions to inflate share prices and pad the portfolios of top brass.

McClary’s affair with HR hatchet woman Sally Wilcox (Maria Bello, as underutilized as all the women in the movie, including the excellent Rosemarie DeWitt) is no more or less compelling than the storyline tracing the disbelief, panic, and eventual desperation of Chris Cooper’s Phil Woodward, a lower-echelon suit who worked his way to the offices from a position on the manufacturing floor. Cooper, as usual, invests his character with reserves of subtlety and nuance, even though Wells’s screenplay sends him on an easily foreseen journey.

As thematic kin to “Up in the Air,” “The Company Men” somberly and earnestly explores the pain, frustration, and humiliation of sudden termination. Less gripping than non-fiction entries like Charles Ferguson’s “Inside Job” and Alex Gibney’s “Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer,” Wells’s character-focused weepie simplifies the contours of modern wage inequities, especially in the figure of Craig T. Nelson’s reptilian CEO. The film also dubiously suggests that even privileged, white, male, multi-millionaires like McClary are suffering, a position some viewers will certainly find a little difficult to swallow.

Although it has drawn a few generous and mostly undeserved comparisons to William Wyler’s 1946 WW II readjustment classic “The Best Years of Our Lives,” “The Company Men” floats in a lukewarm pool of generalities and banalities (“We used to build something here”) that won’t likely hold up over time. All four of the movie’s top-liners are Academy Award recipients (though Affleck and Costner did not win for acting), and the presence of cinematographer Roger Deakins also burnishes the movie with a golden glow. Had “The Company Men” been a pilot for an hour-long network drama, Wells’s rhythm and pacing – which races from efficient introductions to a leisurely, almost repetitious, hammock-like comfort zone of scenes before tooling an abrupt, truncated conclusion – would have satisfactorily set the stage for a season of episodes.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Sofia Coppola continues her close examination of the liminal in “Somewhere,” a series of snapshot glimpses into the imagined life of a spoiled movie actor confronted with a dread feeling of purposelessness. Few contemporary filmmakers capture the essence of ennui like Coppola, and the often misjudged and underrated stylist faces more than her share of criticism in part because she makes it all look so easy. Some will have a hell of a time sympathizing with a multi-millionaire protagonist whose only non-existential crises revolve around Ferrari engine failure and numbing press junkets, but Coppola shrewdly finds the heart of the movie in a father-daughter relationship that transcends the jet-set glamour.

Stephen Dorff’s Johnny Marco operates in nearly the same Hollywood fantasy universe as Adrian Grenier’s Vincent Chase on the HBO series “Entourage.” Nursing a busted wrist following a woozy, boozy Chateau Marmont staircase tumble, Johnny passes the hours between impromptu parties at the storied hotel by watching twin pole dancers demonstrate routines in his boudoir (as usual, Coppola’s musical selections are impeccable, and a majority of the songs are incorporated diegetically). Coddled and indulged by a steady supply of sycophants, Johnny sleepwalks through a sensualist’s head-trip of compliant, sexually available nymphs.

Johnny’s hazy drift is interrupted by the appearance of his pre-teen daughter Cleo (a tremendous Elle Fanning), who refocuses the playboy’s attention and serves as a catalyst for a series of steps toward adult responsibility and something resembling emotional maturity. Coppola smoothly engineers a believable role reversal in which Cleo’s poise, composure and self-reliance symbolically eclipse the domestically helpless Johnny, perhaps most effectively in a lovely scene in which Cleo carefully prepares a homemade breakfast of eggs Benedict. Later, when Cleo breaks down at the thought of being abandoned by her mother, the audience is as startled as Johnny at this sudden, unexpected reminder of Cleo’s tender age.

Partially trapped by her surname and the privileges that come with dynastic connections to wealth and fame, Coppola will probably have to make a whole bunch of terrific movies to stanch the endless river of criticism invited by her pet themes. “Somewhere,” like “Lost in Translation” and “Marie Antoinette” before it, sticks close to an exploration of ideas rooted in some dimension of autobiography – or so the prognosticators would like to imagine. While Coppola has endured a treadmill of interviews in which she carefully negotiates the intrigue as well as the limits of “sharing” her own life (i.e. the anecdote that she once sampled every flavor of gelato with papa Francis Ford Coppola), it is too narrow to suggest that “Somewhere” is merely about the perils of money and celebrity.

For those cinephile admirers of Coppola, “Somewhere” can be as delightful as the anachronistic pink Chuck Taylor sneakers in “Marie Antoinette.” It is a movie filled with surprises and unafraid to be aridly, bitingly funny and achingly, romantically painful, even if the concluding epiphany doesn’t quite work. Coppola’s movies brim with sly moments that linger in memory long after the viewing experience. From the purposefully prolonged shot of Johnny’s latex-encased head to the perfectly imperfect performance of Cleo’s ice dance set to Gwen Stefani’s “Cool,” “Somewhere” finds plenty of ways to travel almost everywhere.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Following an auto-erotic asphyxiation misadventure that ends the life of a hot-shot coworker, naïve manchild/insurance salesman Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) must represent his small town agency at a regional conference in metropolis Cedar Rapids. The nervous, neophyte conventioneer takes his very first airplane ride to get there, and shortly after arrival meets roomies Ronald Wilkes (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) and Dean “Deanzie” Ziegler (John C. Reilly), unlikely guides for Tim’s initiation into the worldly, after hours pleasures that threaten Tim’s run at a coveted “Two Diamond” service award. En route to a predictably Capra-corn finale, director Miguel Arteta’s broad brushstrokes paint a familiar portrait of big-hearted rubes.

Whether or not Arteta laughs with or at his subjects is a matter of debate, but the principal cast members tackle their roles in earnest. The masterful Reilly, whose Deanzie constantly runs his filthy mouth without filter, relishes the opportunity to stick it to the hypocritical holy rollers running the ASMI (American Society of Mutual Insurance, but pronounced, naturally, “ass me”), knowing full well that straitlaced Ronald will patiently tolerate every outrageous insult and innuendo. Joining the fellows is Joan Ostrowski-Fox (Anne Heche), a candid and forward ASMI veteran who quickly tempts the “pre-engaged” Tim.

Despite Deanzie’s colorful way with words and his unconcealed pain at the unraveling of his marriage, Heche’s Ostrowski-Fox emerges as the most interesting figure in the movie. Arteta handles the fallout from her “what happens in Cedar Rapids stays in Cedar Rapids” adultery more effectively than the practically identical complication that Jason Retiman takes so seriously in “Up in the Air.” Helms is hardly George Clooney, but Lippe’s post-coital meltdown allows the actor to invest in a hysterical display of humiliation that includes a confessional phone call to the older woman (Sigourney Weaver as Lippe’s former middle school science teacher and current lover) Lippe believes he has wronged.

The comedy of embarrassment built around infantilized male protagonists is more than a cottage industry, and “Cedar Rapids” joins a long list of movies that wring laughs from fish-out-of-water scenarios capitalizing on Peter Pan-like characters embarking on journeys of self-discovery. Lippe’s adventure includes making the acquaintance of prostitute Bree (Alia Shawkat), whose heart of gold beats faster when introducing her new pal to the joys of crystal meth. Shawkat, like Heche, makes the most of her limited screen time and is a welcome presence in otherwise masculine territory.

“Cedar Rapids” seldom takes seriously its satirical mission to expose the hypocrisy of the ASMI’s religious piety and moral righteousness. Kurtwood Smith’s unctuous Orin Helgesson registers in several smaller scenes, including one that necessitates a nude locker room embrace. Arteta appears to relish any opportunity to showcase the pasty flab of his unclothed cast members, even if the dermal displays exist primarily to fuel uneasy gags about homosexuality. “Cedar Rapids” evolves into something as mild and unassuming as its central figure, and though Tim Lippe is a little long in the tooth to be the subject of a traditional bildungsroman, Helms inhabits him as a man who sheds his innocence without losing his good manners and essential decency.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Relying on a fluid editing structure that contrasts past and present, director Derek Cianfrance’s labor of love “Blue Valentine” is a painful domestic drama anchored by Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, the skillful performers playing a couple on the brink of divorce. Both stars double as executive producers, and Williams reportedly received a version of the script when she was only 21. Cianfrance intended to shoot the early relationship sequences and then wait several years to complete the material that takes place when the characters are older, but budget limitations prevented any prolonged or interrupted shooting schedule.

The minor press drama surrounding the almost NC-17 rating of the movie proves more interesting than the film itself, a metaphorically bloody dissection of the doomed relationship of Gosling’s Dean and Williams’s Cindy. While Harvey Weinstein’s personal appeal to the MPAA spared the film any cuts (the original objection centered on a short scene of discreet cunnilingus), the film’s one-sheet is the sexiest thing about “Blue Valentine.” The intercourse that materializes onscreen, especially a near coupling in a space-age themed novelty hotel room, is caustic – even humiliating – and laced with a purposeful artlessness that highlights love’s extinction.

Whenever Cianfrance cuts to the scenes of Dean and Cindy’s courtship, the audience breathes a small sigh of relief. As the “now” scenes crushingly hammer toward demolition, the “then” scenes fill in the relationship’s construction. Dean’s sensitivity places a somewhat dubious halo around Gosling that the actor struggles to shatter. Dean supports Cindy all the way, from a literal last minute change of heart over an abortion to a steadfast commitment to raise daughter Frankie as his own. He deals with Cindy’s less than supportive family and survives that tried and true movie trope: a vicious beatdown from Cindy’s awful ex.

Karina Longworth aptly and accurately pointed out that “Blue Valentine” favors Dean’s point-of-view over Cindy’s, and that the film as made demonstrates a “lack of interest in imbuing [Cianfrance’s] female character with the rich interior life and complicated morality he gives his male lead.” While Longworth wonders aloud about the possibility of misogyny, viewers will find themselves longing for any opportunity to understand Cindy as something other than burned out, exhausted, and constantly prepared to reject any and all of her husband’s attempts at reconciliation and affection. The unfortunate result casts Cindy as a cruel shrew and aligns the movie with Dean’s desperate desire to hold the marriage together and protect Frankie from growing up in a broken home.

“Blue Valentine” unapologetically embraces the gut-wrenching death throes of a once promising union through the minutiae of observed details and improvisational performances, a bold directorial decision that is certain to turn off more viewers than it attracts. Designed to showcase every inch of working class drabness, the film benefits substantially from Grizzly Bear’s atmospheric music as well as the nearly forgotten early 1970s demo “You and Me,” credited to Penny and the Quarters (an interesting story in itself). The obscurity of the song, which Cianfrance shared with Gosling but deliberately kept from Williams, symbolizes the dedication of the filmmakers to their constructed universe, even though that world teeters on the precipice of oblivion.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s fourth feature “Biutiful” retains the director’s long-windedness while dispensing with the criss-crossing, interlocking approach to multiple plot threads that he employed in the loose trilogy of “Amores perros,” “21 Grams,” and “Babel.” Inarritu, whose preoccupation with death hovers over all of his features, inscribes “Biutiful” to his father, but despite the closeness shared between audience and principal character Uxbal (Javier Bardem), the movie struggles mightily to sustain its nearly two-and-a-half hour running time. Set in a gritty Barcelona a world away from the sun-dappled paradise inhabited by Bardem’s Juan Antonio in Woody Allen’s terrific “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” “Biutiful” explores the end of a life not particularly well lived.

Bleak is assuredly the most commonly applied adjective in reviews of “Biutiful,” and Inarritu relentlessly constructs one nearly unbearable crucible after another. Close to the outset, we learn that black market fixer Uxbal has but a few months to live, as his prostate cancer spreads throughout his body. Unable to rely on his mentally unstable ex, whose parenting skills will give any mother or father the shudders, Uxbal turns to Liwei (Luo Jin) and Ige (Diaryatou Daff), undocumented aliens, to look after his two kids while he juggles daily conflicts arising from his shady business dealings.

Several detractors have pounced on Inarritu for what might be perceived as cultural opportunism, especially in the way the Chinese and Senegalese characters are engaged as exotic wallpaper in Uxbal’s colorfully wretched journey toward oblivion. While one subplot involving a secret relationship between two of Uxbal’s Chinese partners vexingly goes nowhere, Inarritu devotes enough time to Ige for her own plight to resonate with the viewer. Also in the director’s defense is the narrative’s unwavering dedication to Uxbal, whose shoulder and point of view are almost never abandoned.

As a guiding motif never more than a breath away, death announces itself in several manifestations throughout the movie. Uxbal makes additional cash as a clairvoyant who communicates with the departed, and while some skeptics cry foul, Inarritu wants the viewers to know he is a believer: frightening apparitions float near ceilings, and some of the ghosts communicate directly with Uxbal. In one sequence, Uxbal literally touches the face of the father he never met when an exhumation provides a surreal once-in-a-deathtime opportunity. In many ways, this memorable moment is the closest “Biutiful” comes to expressing Inarritu’s gift for synthesizing the grotesque and the transcendent, although regular collaborator Rodrigo Prieto’s photography frames cockroaches and asphyxiated sweatshop workers with a “fearful symmetry” that finds beauty in the unlikeliest of images.

In one unmistakably strange set-piece, Uxbal visits a club that might as well be called Purgatorio. Accompanied by the deafening thump of Underworld’s “Shudder/King of Snake,” Uxbal somnambulates through the crowd of sweaty revelers while gyrating dancers appear as sexual monstrosities, nipples sprouting from buttocks and giant breasts where heads should be. The entire outré enterprise carries Inarritu’s emotional manipulation past the point of bluntness, but then, whoever accused this filmmaker of subtlety? Fortunately, Bardem is a monumental screen presence, and his previous work, including “Before Night Falls,” “The Sea Inside,” and even “No Country for Old Men” indicates a pattern of suffering that reaches some kind of apex – or nadir – in “Biutiful.”

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Hilariously specific and wildly improbable, “Unknown” stars coasting underachiever Liam Neeson (“Release the Kraken!”) in another of his recent paycheck-generators. Oskar Schindler may be long out of sight, but Neeson’s choices make for a fascinating and motley collection of historical personalities and fictional firebrands. From Michael Collins and Qui-Gon Jinn to Alfred Kinsey and the majestic lion Aslan, Neeson is no stranger to characters with incredible self-confidence or mighty ego – and sometimes both at the same time. “Unknown” provides the appealing performer with another protagonist whose sensitivity and decency collide with the necessity of physical violence.

Neeson – now approaching sixty – plays biotechnology researcher Dr. Martin Harris, an academic visiting Berlin for a major conference. Leaving behind much younger wife Elizabeth (January Jones) to check in to the hotel while he attempts to retrieve a mislaid briefcase from the airport, Harris experiences serious trauma when the taxi in which he is riding plummets into a river. Four days later, the groggy and disoriented victim makes his way back to Elizabeth, who shockingly denies ever having met him. Stranger still, Elizabeth is in the company of another man identified as Martin Harris. Undeterred, Harris aims to uncover the truth, which turns out to be a pretty ripe caper involving a blight-resistant strain of, yes, corn.

Based on a novel by Didier van Cauwelaert titled in English as “Out of My Head,” which alludes to an impishness the film never musters, “Unknown” is the second Dark Castle Entertainment-branded title directed by Jaume Collet-Serra to deal with the concept of double personalities. While it is certainly an improvement over “Orphan,” “Unknown” is instantly recognizable for the movie-world convenience provided by a konk on the noggin. It really doesn’t matter whether Neeson is Harris or not, given the constant presence of danger and peril that rockets the man from one dilemma to the next.

“Unknown” also takes itself more seriously than it should, and its few flashes of humor – most of which belong to the wisecracking Diane Kruger in her role as Gina, the Bosnian cabbie whose fateful fare involves her in farfetched espionage – are drowned out by plot convolutions and action thriller genre requirements. Car chases and assassination attempts alternate with quieter scenes, several of which focus on the tremendous Bruno Ganz as a weary former Stasi agent invigorated by an opportunity to revisit the kind of deception with which he dealt decades ago. Ganz’s single-scene confrontation with Frank Langella is a delightful slice of Black Forest ham.

Welding “The Bourne Identity” to several of Alfred Hitchcock’s finest “wrong man” scenarios, “Unknown” demonstrates for the umpteenth time the tonal challenges that the Master of Suspense made look so effortless. One immediately recognizable problem lies in the romantic inclinations of the “faithful” Harris toward the woman he thinks is his wife, even as the story insists that he and Gina take turns rescuing one another from all manner of serious bodily harm. In his prime, Hitchcock would not have commenced shooting until the sexual gamesmanship was honed to a fine edge of innuendo and double entendre, an element sorely missing from “Unknown.”