[Spoiler alert: If you are really interested in seeing the new Liam Neeson movie "Unknown" because, for example, you're a big Qui-Gon Jim fan, please read no more. I am about to give wikipedia a run for its money on plot recap.]
So here's you basic plot: dude wakes up in cold water with a case of sick amnesia. He believes he is someone who he cannot quite identify but knows at least his name. He is cared for by (in no particular order) a cute girl with a barely distinguishable German accent, a kindly bearded man, and a series of drifters who somehow have a connection to a mafia-like drifter underworld. These are usually followed by a series of "who am I??!!" sololiquies and/or diatribes that take place between 1 and 3 am... you know, for optimal lighting. He realizes that the person who he thought he was - in name only - is his real identity. Our protagonist (?? or is he??) then typically becomes involved with foreign police who come from the same "I work too hard to deal with psychos like this, who, by the way, I seem to deal with on a daily basis, background," and we as the audience come to find out that this particular dude has a set of nasty, only-could-come-from-intense-training skills: maybe he can kill someone in a knife-like fashion but with an object that barely resembles a knife or maybe he can take a POS car, stomp on the gas a bit and turn into Mario Andretti. All the viewer knows is that this dude should not be effed with. Still people try to screw with him. Maybe all he wants to is to figure out who he "really is" or why he "knows these skills seemingly as second nature." Do they bother to ask? No. They just want to kill him and, in that quest, are woefully unprepared. At some point along the way he discovers that he is some sort of assassin/CIA spook/Green Beret and has multiple identities, usually realized when he unearths a number of passports with his photo but different names. Flashbacks ensue. After a sex scene, or maybe just incredibly strong sexual tension, he and his poorly-accented German counterpart get to the bottom of who he really is, confront his tormentors/former co-workers, and leave the foreign city in some non-standard form of transportation. There is always an epiphany: having realized that he is not the name he thought he was, but does not know his real name, has decided that since everyone knows him as that name he might as well keep it.
Sound familiar? Yeah I thought so...
Here's the kicker: The Bourne Identity came out in 2002 and spawned two sequels -- plus talk of a third, but I don't think Robert Lundlam would be okay with that. Unknown came out in 2011. The only differences I can see:
1. Liam Neeson can pass for no younger than 50; Matt Damon can pass for any age from 25-40
2. Matt Damon is being chased by a well-identified CIA group. There's even a codename: Treadstone. Liam Neeson is being chased by Americans with bad British accents aided by emo Germans.
3. January Jones, whose best role to date is maybe the stereotypical American girl in the Milwaukee bar in Love Actually, is a focal point of Liam Neeson's attempt to find out who he is -- she plays his "wife." It is only surmised that Julia Stiles and Matt Damon had a relationship, and not until the third movie.
My point remains: Have we gotten to a point in our society where it is acceptable to repackage movies that are only 9 years old, give them a "twist," and sell them as a "new" movie?
Your question is valid too, of course. But no, I have nothing better to do with my time.
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