
Unknown was our first choice to watch. It's a 2011 British, German, French film with Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, January Jones, Aidan Quinn, Bruno Ganz, and Frank Langella. It got a script by Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cornwell. It's based on a 2003 French novel by Didier Van Cauwelaert called Out of My Head. Jaume Collet-Serra is the director, he's made a half dozen films, of which I've only seen his 2005 remake of House Of Wax. I don't much remember anything much about it, it has been 8 years since I've seen it. Mind you, I usually can't remember what I saw Friday night on Monday morning. Lucky for me I have a blog and I can go look it up.

Liam and January arrive in Berlin for a biotechnology summit. There's going to be a big announcement from Professor Bressler. He's got a corn that grows anywhere and it's worth a lot. Liam's a scientist too and January is his wife. Liam is going to the summit. As January checks in at the hotel, Liam finds they've left a bag at the airport. Without telling her what's he's doing Liam jumps into a cab and races back to the airport. Liam's cell phone won't connect and the cab falls into a river. Diane is the driver, she's an illegal alien, of the terrestrial kind sadly, and she runs off fearing deportation. Liam wakes up in the hospital 4 days later and has some trouble with his memory. Bits and pieces come back and he leaves to look up his wife. At the hotel January doesn't know who he is and there's another man, Aiden, saying he's Liam. He knows everything that Liam knows and poor Liam is mightily confused. Liam runs around trying to figure out what happened, he contacts Diane but she doesn't want to get in trouble, eventually he confronts the replacement Liam again. Liam is so agitated Aiden knows all he knows that he passes out and wakes up in the hospital.

An assassin comes looking for Liam and kills the nice nurse who got in his way. She had given Liam Bruno's name and address. Bruno is an ex-Stasi agent and he helps people find missing people. The assassin poison's Liam's IV but Liam escapes and looks up Bruno. Bruno offers some help and Liam connects with Diana again. She offers him a place to stay. Soon as they get settled at her apartment the assassins come calling. The pace starts to pick up and there's more action and chasing about. There's a couple of car chases and a lot of taxi cabs get trashed. The suitcase at the airport gives Liam more stuff to ponder about.

Frank turns up as an old pal of Liam's but he's another one with secret. Bruno figured out Frank is more than he appears to be and that Frank is in on the whole plot. More of Liam's past is revealed and he's surprised at what's really going on. It's a nice twist. The script is pretty well worked out, things fall into place a bit at a time, and the baddies get some fine deaths.

Good acting from most of the cast, I especially liked watching Bruno Ganz as the ex-Stasi agent. The sets and locations are a nice variety. Sure is a lot of graffiti on everything. I enjoyed it, it's a solid thriller with a bit of nice mind games going on. Worth a look and a re-watch for some.

Seventh Code is a 2014 Japanese film written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Like our other film it starts off as one sort of story and ends as another thing. It stars Japanese Pop Idol Atsuko Maeda as a young woman in Vladivostok looking for a Japanese guy named Matsunaga she met onetime. He tells her he isn't interested in her but she's determined to keep following him. She gets befriended by the owner and chef of a small Japanese restaurant in the city. He has a Chinese girlfriend who leaves part way through the movie.

Good for her, the secret life of Atsuko and Matsunaga turns deadly for the chef. Reminds me that getting involved with strangers can be a dangerous game. It's a short film, 60 minutes, and there's a bit of action near the end. The script kept it's secrets well and the actors did a good job fooling me. Nice graffiti filled locations and plenty of them. I'd recommend it but it would be harder to find than most movies.