Film Review: Unknown

A story about men stuck in a large warehouse. Five stars!

I am a devoted fan of the bargain basement DVD section of HMV. It is largely due to this commendably unprejudiced miserliness that I have recently come into contact with Jim Caviezel, God bless him. he tries. He tried in 'Angel Eyes', with Jennifer Lopez (only £3.59!). He tried in that Mel Gibson film about Jesus, where Gibson subtly interweaved the story of the Messiah along with subliminal imagery showing pictures of himself cuddling Jews and holding up signs saying 'Mel Gibson does not hate Jews'. That one only cost me £2.99! It would have been better in 3D though...

Caviezel also tried hard in 'Frequency'. In Frequency Caviezel maintained his 'I'm sad, me' face tirelessly for 120 minutes, whilst acting alongside that man who I tend to confuse with Meg Ryan's ex-husband who she cheated on with Russell Crowe. Dennis Quaid! Don't worry; Dennis; you're better off out of it anyway - I hear Meg was very rude to Michael Parkinson and only somone one with a morality vaccum in the place where their heart should be could be rude to Parky.

Now Jim is trying hard in 'Unknown', next to Bridget Moynahan (also wearing a sad face). Basically; Jim wakes up. He's confused. He doesn't know who he is. Or where he is. He's wearing double-denim, so things are VERY BAD INDEED. Also bad? He's surrounded by bodies; one has been shot, one is lying face down on the ground covered in blood, one is tied to a chair. Is this Saw VII? No, it isn't, unfortunately, because that would have been markedly less forgettable.

Jim wanders around...I think that he's in a warehouse somewhere? He can't get out, everything is soundproof and the doors are all heavy-duty and sealed. It doesn't look good. What is Jim to do? I know! How about sad face?



Columbia Pictures would like to introduce 'Sad Face'

Jim wanders around for quite a bit. A bit too long, actually, if you ask me, because I'm not here for the Warehouse tour of Mexican desert outposts. He takes his denim jacket off (good move). He puts it back on again (No!! What are you doing!). He needs to get out of the Warehouse, because if he doesn't then the Fashion Police are going to sentence him to appear on Ten Years Younger alongside that heavily plasticised South African villain.



Don't be rude about my denim jacket you cunt

Jim finds leaking gas (oh no!), then he answers a telephone call and it turns out that maybe he's a bad guy (Oh no!! Cue more sad face). The bodies around him start to wake up, and one of them is from 'Six Feet Under' and since leaving the show he has put on a beard and quite a bit of weight. The bodies argue. They accuse Jim of being a baddie. J'accuse, Jim!! Jim looks sad. The bodies don't want to be his friend, because he is wearing a denim jacket.



Jim is arrested for crimes against fashion, tells kids 'Don't do double denim!'

We cut to Bridget Moynahan. She's doing something with a locker, but nothing very interesting or worthy of subplot. They introduce her by using that pervy camera shot which introduces all female characters in films: she is walking along in a short skirt and the camera slides slowly up from her high heels to her legs as she walks in a sexy but determined way that I have never seen a woman walk in unless she is on the telly.

The film industry seemed to really embrace this slide-up-the-ladies-legs shot in the eighties and I have to assume that, given Jim Caviezel's wardrobe and the budding friendship-slash-adversarial relations playing out in the Warehouse that this film is in fact some kind of 1980s homage to the buddy movie.

Somebody offers Bridget a cup of coffee, I think its a nice policemen. She can't drink coffee; you idiot! She's too sad! See the sad face? She talks to him about sunsets. I'm not really sure whats going on and start having a conversation with my friend about underground Luxembourgish hip hop.

Jim is still in the Warehouse, but nobody can remember who they are yet or how they might know each other. They blame the leaking gas for their memory loss. Helpfully, on the side of the gas cannister there is a message which reads 'Leakage may result in memory loss or death'. Oh no! Oh well never mind, hopefully everyone will forget that when they first met Jim was wearing a denim jacket.

Each character blames the other for being the bad guy; but they don't really remember who is what. The fat guy from Six Feet Under tells Jim that he saved him from drowning when they were kids; then after finishing his story he dies. They cover Fatty in a dirty blue blanket and then fight over a gun. Jim reveals that he had a telephone conversation with the kidnappers, and that he might be one of them. Sad face.




Jim, practises 'Sad Face' keeps fingers crossed for that Oscar

Perhaps I am supposed to be hoping that Jim is not a superbad kidnapping gun-totin' criminal, but is in fact just a tour guide for the 2008 Mexican Warehouse Tour of the Midwest? Its difficult to say at this point which I think he is, although whichever personality transpires I would like very much to see a break from sad face. The Warehouse crew start sawing at some bars on a window. This is very dull. Then they start hoisting each other up to try shooting out another window. Go team! They they whistle for a bit. Its a very tense affair indeed. But not tense enough to prevent me from disappearing for ten minutes to make some cheese on toast.
When I get back, Jim is pointing a gun at two of his Warehouse cronies, because he thinks that he might be a baddie, and that is what baddies do. The denim jacket has made a reappearance: Video Killed the Radio Star! They ask him not to kill them, because they don't want to die and that. Surely there can't be a more humiliating way to die than at the hands of a sad-faced man wearing a denim jacket. Unless of course you died in the 80s; in which case what an admirably fashion-forward death you must have had. 'Put a trenchcoat on; Jim!'; his Warehouse friends say* (*if you read between the lines). At least then they can say that they were killed by a flasher.

The camera cuts away, and two shots ring out. Oh my God! I can barely take the suspense! Jim is fighting someone else. He looks like a sexy homeless person. His friends turn up - they aren't dead! Hurrah! It turns out that he isn't a baddie, he's an undercover cop. Sad face. Hang on; why is sad face here? Aren't we happy and relieved that Jim is an undercover cop and not in fact a kidnapper? Sad face looks at Bridget Moynahan. Bridget Moynahan looks at sad face. Knowingly. Am I missing something? Ooh -there's a twist coming! Watch out M. Night Shayamalan! M; Night Shayamalan can rest easy; this twist isn't exactly keeping the Usual Suspects awake at night.

In a series of vaseline-lensed flashbacks, we are told that Bridget and sad face were having an affair. A bit of an awkward affair, entirely free from the confines of any sexual chemistry. In lots of white rooms with white, cloudy curtains they hold hands and he looks at her legs. They hatch a plan to get her away from her husband, who it turns out is one of Jim's Warehouse cronies. The plan is not called 'divorce'. I'm a bit bored, and the cheese on my cheese on toast has curdled in an unappealing fashion. Sad face. Fuck you, cheese! Never mind, at least I'm not wearing a denim jacket.

Film Review: Outlaw

'Outlaw': its a romatic comedy

Outlaw! Rah!! Lots of men! Being...men...and that.

So, who's in it? Well, Sean Bean plays Sean Bean with a slightly-angrier-than-usual face. Danny Dyer plays Danny Dyer. Bob Hoskins plays Helen Mirren. I'm lying. He plays Bob Hoskin of course (he's reaching!). Keira Knightly's boyfriend Rupert Friend is thrown in for good measure to corner the homosexual market. Rupert Friend is angry. He's angry...and Aristocratic. Rah!! Men!! Angry men!! He's angry because some senseless yobs have gone and bashed his beautiful face in for no good reason, leaving him hideously scarred for life and with nothing to do but shoot birds on his Dad's massive estate and look moodily vulnerable.



Sean Bean's 'angrier-than-usual' face

Get the fucking violins out, yeah? Just FYI: that's 'estate' as in 'landed property'. Not 'estate' as in 'embarrassing but practical family vehicle'. To be fair though, if they had left ol' Rupert with nothing to do but shoot pigeons off his Dad's estate car, I personally would have been better able to empathise with his bland, poorly-drawn-out, one-dimensional character.

Anyway, so Rupert's pissed off and that. Also pissed off is Sean Bean, because he's come home from the army in a truly horrific jumper and his wife has changed the locks and moved some other bloke in without, y'know, running it by him. So Sean Bean looks through the window at his wife on the sofa being cuddled by another man, and then, because this is a tough, violent film about MEN!! Real MEN!!! he... well, he just leaves, actually, without saying anything.

This, my friend, is called 'characterisation'. Sean's been in the army. Its been tough and that. Then he's gone and left; only to find his wife shacked up with somebody else. On a sofa, no less. Chin up, Sean! Presumably this other man is not a REAL man. Is that the message that 'Outlaw' hopes to convey? Well the credits haven't rolled yet, so I'll have to assume that it isn't.



Sad Sean. Saaad.

Sean's character, like, totally internalises everything, yeah? And all of this repressed rage turns him into this superviolent outlaw! Rah! So the message is: don't internalise everything, Sean Bean; or you'll turn into a violent outlaw with inconsistent characterisation and a feeble back-story. Still no sign of the credits, so I guess that isn't the message either. God, this film just has so many layers to it!!

Sean Bean meekly leaves his wife and her lover cuddling happily on the sofa. As he walks away he runs into some yoofs who tease him about his horrid jumper. Actually, they tease him about the fact that he's been in the Army, but between you and me its pretty clear that 'the Army' is merely a metaphor for his jumper. Sean gets quite cross, and it looks as if the yobs are in for a beating, only, there are quite alot of yobs and only one Sean Bean wearing an I'm-even-angrier-than-usual expression.



Do you like Sean's jumper? He wears it to make certain that everybody knows he is DEFINITELY HETEROSEXUAL.

The yoofs, revealing themselves as a remarkably perceptive bunch of road-dwelling chavs, seem to cotton onto the fact that Sean is not to be messed with, and leave him alone to cry into his jumper. Hurrah! Now Sean can devote himself wholeheartedly to the vainglorious task of teaching a group of angry social misfits to beat the living shit out of people.



I'm not gay, alright!

Can you see where this is going? A group of angry men; REAL men!!, and they are all pissed off at society, and feel helpless and unable to protect themselves. So the message of this film is: having a bad day? Call Sean Bean and he will probably do something about it before the end of the film (hopefully soon, because its been an hour now and I'm getting bored of fantasising that he and I will get married one day).



Sean Bean steals one of William Hague's favourite baseball caps and the gang warn Hague off when he visits Sean's bungalow to claim it back

No, that's not the message either. So these men get together and decide to do some manly killing and stuff. We see some montages of them thinking about the bad stuff that has happened to them: the Barrister and his lovely lady wife; Danny Dyer and his fiancee while he gets beaten up by more yoofs (are these guys living in a bad area or what?); Danny Dyers' mate, who is blatantly going to dob them all in later when things get out of hand; Keira Knightly's boyfriend, hideously scarred by prosthetic make-up; and there is also some tagalong security guard who joined forces with Sean Bean after showing him some CCTV footage of a couple having sex.



The outlaws get ready for their gymnastics class

By this point in the film, I was getting unreasonably angry about the level of 'hideous disfigurement' that Rupert Friend is supposed to be suffering from. Put it this way; I've had acne worse. Why do they do that? Like in Phantom of the Opera where the Phantom is supposed to be this complete aesthetic monstrosity, and instead of any actual deformity he's just got a bit of a cool scar which you just know that all the girls would love anyway.



Rupert's 'hideous disfigurement'

Sean Bean's tagalong mate wot showed him the naughty sexy CCTV doesn't have anything to be pissed off about, from what I can see. He reveals that he was once dismissed from the Army because he had a criminal record (surely a prerequisite for joining the Army; no?), and then he reveals that he was ejected from the TA for something else. Then he decided to become a Security Guard.



See how fucking suspicious this guy looks? Yeah. Well nobody else seems to notice that.

Hang on. This guy sounds a bit unstable. Is it possible that he might spiral out of Sean's control? Um, yes. Is it likely that he might enjoy the violent side of being a Outlaw a bit too much? Um, yes. Is that also a hint that he might look up to the ex-military Sean Bean for a bit, before swiftly spiralling out of control. Um, yes.
The Security Guard decides that Sean Bean's angry face is just a front. These two appear to have very different concepts of what 'being an outlaw' should consist of. The once-harmonious group-for-angry-men breaks down, because they can't agree about what being an Outlaw should involve. Also, Danny Dyer's mate who is seemingly in the group for no apparent reason? Well, guess what, he's going to betray them all later. Spoiler alert!



Danny Dyer's eyes disappear into two black holes carefully hidden on his face

I reckon this film is a message about good organisational skills. If Sean Bean had screened prospective members for his 'angry men group' by asking applicants to submit a 1000-word essay, entitled 'What being an Outlaw means to me', then none of the ensuing moral dilemmas would have come to the fore. So, the message is: if you decide to kill someone with a bunch of people of questionable reliability whom you have only just met, have a brief meeting with them first (a brain-storming session, if you will) about what direction this faction might potentially take. That way it won't be such a gore-laden surprise towards the end of the film, eh?



Sean models his new design for the official 'outlaw' uniform, but the gang disagree over wether the lapels will make them look fat and, after a bit of discussion, they opt for a branded leotard design instead

Not to worry, there's a big shoot-out which clears things up nicely and is full of some nice suspense. Danny Dyer escapes and doesn't marry his fiancee, because apparently he doesn't want to (I don't really care either way; do what you want, mate); Rupert Friend chickens out; the Barrister dies, because they didn't know what to do with him and the film's running time has reached the acceptable 120 minute-limit; Sean Bean dies, because he doesn't have the courage to kill his wife and her lover (who wasn't a real man anyway, and probably wasn't worth it eh Sean?); and Danny Dyer's mate seems to walk away unscathed with an envelope full of cash.



Its A Boy! Lenny James gives birth to Sean Bean. Poor Lenny. Somebody's going to need stitches!

I can't really be bothered to go into Bob Hoskins, but basically he dies too and there might have been some homoerotic subtext with him and Sean Bean which was sadly never developed because both of them are too much like REAL MEN! Rah! to do anything about it. Oh yeah, and a baddie gets stabbed in the cock. Hang on... which of them are the baddies now that they done all that terrible killing and that? This film just has so many damn layers to it. Its an absolute fucking onion of a film.