The Unknown Poker Blog

I know this is supposed to be a poker blog and I’ll get to poker in a bit, but right now I want to talk about movies. I am a huge fan of the Liam Neeson movie Taken. It is one of just a few movies I will watch over and over if I happen to run across it while channel surfing (the others being My Cousin Vinny, Working Girl and Prelude to a Kiss).

So when I saw the trailer for Unknown I was pretty excited. It looked like a Taken kind of movie - BUT IT WASN’T! It was a movie that was probably constructed around an intriguing idea and some inviting trailer scenettes (my word for portions of scenes) for the purpose of luring Taken fans into a potentially bedbug infested theatre under false pretenses.

If you haven’t yet seen Unknown but intend to, then perhaps you should skip down to the poker portion of this blog because I may inadvertently – or advertently - reveal some spoilers. But for those of you who have seen the movie some of what I say may cause you to think critically. (By the way, my wife thinks I’m being ridiculous because it is simply entertainment and for two-thirds of the movie I will admit to having been entertained. Yet I have written a bunch of screenplays and she knows I get very troubled by inconsistent writing – and even more so by stories that paint themselves into a corner and then paint a cartoon door by which to escape).

So where do we begin? Okay let’s start with something that occurs in Unknown as well as many other movies and drives me craaaazy. Someone is out to kill the hero. In this case some mysterious person or group is out to kill the Liam Neeson character (whom I will refer to as Neeson from this point on for brevity’s sake). At one point he is dazed and strapped to a gurney in a hospital. In order to get to Neeson an assassin kills an orderly and a nurse by simply snapping their necks. And now of course he is alone with Neeson. So what does he do? Does he simply snap Neeson’s neck as well. No of course not. Instead for some unexplained – and unexplainable – reason he shoots some liquid into Neeson’s I.V. allowing Neeson a chance to pull out the I.V. and survive. Why why why not just kill him quickly and leave? My wife’s response was “well if he did that there wouldn’t be a movie.” OH MY GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?

I’ll move on before I have a stroke. Okay let’s talk about another conceit of the movie. It turns out that Neeson is an assassin who, along with another assassin pretending to be his wife, has travelled to Germany to do what assassins do, assassinate someone. Unfortunately Neeson is the victim of a car accident rendering him an amnesiac unable to finish the job. But not to worry because the freaking assassination people have trained a backup IN ADVANCE to step into Neeson’s shoes just in case he were involved in a car accident rendering him an amnesiac. Luckily it was Neeson in the accident and not his fake wife because apparently they never bothered to train a fake wife backup.

And in one ultra-incredible scene both Neeson and the backup Neeson are trying to convince the target of the assassination that they are the real Neeson and are actually speaking the same exact words at the same exact moment like a couple of Doublemint twins.

Am I the only person who finds this ludicrous? Am I the only person who questions why everything else that Cinderella had turned to junk at midnight but the glass slipper remained a glass slipper till the end of the story?

Let’s move on for a moment to the accident. Neeson is in a taxi being driven by a beautiful young woman. Do we know instantaneously that she will have much more of a role in this story than just as his taxi driver? Even my wife admits to knowing that, and believe me she is not making my review easy. And thank God this beautiful taxi driver also happens to be an Olympic swimmer/diver/rescuer who is able to work effortlessly underwater to save an unconscious Neeson or else – yes you guessed it – THERE WOULDN’T BE A MOVIE.

Of course the cab itself drowns but not to worry about that either because an hour later THE EXACT SAME CAB (WITH THE EXACT SAME CAB NUMBER) is resurrected. Couldn’t the producers have sprung for another cab or at least changed the cab number?

Anyway, luckily for Neeson, late in the movie he regains his memory and recalls that he is an assassin whose profession it is to kill people. He certainly seems like a reliable, dedicated sort and yet as soon as he remembers everything he immediately sets out to thwart the assassination plan . WHY WHY WHY? I know – because if he didn’t.. etc etc etc.

This leaves one last “why” question. Why did I write this review? I’ll tell you why.

BECAUSE I DON’T LIKE WRITERS WHO TRICK PEOPLE BY LEADING THEM TO THINK THERE IS A REASONABLE ENDING WHEN THERE ISN’T. IT’S DECEITFUL TO LEAD PEOPLE ALONG LIKE THAT.

Oh by the way, there is no poker part to end the blog today. I just said there was in order to lead you along to get you to read the movie part. I hope you aren’t in some bedbug infested place as you read this.