barry pepper Tagged Articles at Cinematical

If you could somehow remove all of the powerful, heart-wrenching moments from Memento, The Usual Suspects, Saw and Reservoir Dogs, and replace them with a slew of flashbacks, a lazy script and an assortment of unnecessary twist endings, you'd wind up with Unknown -- a psychological thriller that loses its edge soon after exposing a flashy and intriguing premise.

On the surface, it's a fantastic set-up: Five guys wake up in a warehouse, bloody and beaten with no idea who they are or how they got there; the only thing that's certain is whoever placed them in this situation does not want them to leave anytime soon. Two of the men are tied up, one of which is suffering from a gun shot wound. While the first of the men, Jean Jacket (James Caviezel), regains consciousness, a phone is ringing somewhere off-screen. As he stumbles into a side office to pick up the receiver, for a brief second we expect the person on the other end to ask, "So James, which scary movie do you feel like ripping off?" Instead, it's a strange voice -- a voice that seems to know who its speaking to, even though Jean Jacket is clueless ... except for that loaded handgun sitting in front of him.

• Firewall - Like Rip Van Winkle with a $25 million per picture deal, nap-addled gruff boy Harrison Ford has seen his career hibernate for more than a decade now, scoring hit upon forgettable hit. Ford's latest variation on a theme is, like the bulk of his post-Indiana Jones filmography, predictable formula fare, and therein lies its broad appeal. In what ultimately feels like a diluted remake of Ron Howard's 1996 thriller, Ransom, he plays a bank security expert whose family is held captive in exchange for his aid in electronically liberating $100 million. Bad guy Paul Bettany sneers and jeers so much that we know from the moment he turns up that Ford is going to heroically beat him and his dirty, dirty bastards, and our belief that goodness triumphing over ee-vil will be renewed. Able British stalwart Richard Loncraine, who directed Bettany in Wimbledon, paints this one by-the-numbers, and anyone looking for what might be their last Harrison Ford fix before Indy 4 (and presumed retirement) will get what they paid for, though very little more.