Persons Unknown

I'm a big fan of Kelly Lynch and in this little movie she did it again she can act.The story is good and the action is fast enough to keep you interest going.Joe Mantegna and an actress I never heard of Naomi Watts did a fairly good job.J.T Walsh os fantastic again.I'm going to miss him a lot he was a great actor.So movie fans if you got the chance to see this movie in a video store try it it's worth the rental fee.Enjoy

This is about a heist gone bad, and Joe Mantagna does his usual adequate job, perhaps not quite as animated as he is in "Jerry and Tom". It may not move along fast enough for some viewers, and the downbeat score keeps it low key. A lot of time is spent on his relationhips with the 2 sisters involved in the heist. But the plot gets interesting, and it's worth a few rental bucks. It's better than Portraits of a Killer, but not quite as good as Route 9 or Phoenix.

Around 1997 while flicking through cable channels I caught the pier scene in this movie and was instantly hooked. The blonde actress in the wheel chair had an incredible presence even just in profile. I did not know who the actress was but immediately wanted to. I checked and she was Naomi Watts (Jet Girl from "Tank Girl" ?). From that moment I was certain that she was destined to become a star. And it sure looked that way in 1997 as a rising young ingenue.

But then for three years her career lost all momentum and sank into a series of minor roles in forgettable movies punctuated by huge gaps of unemployment before David Lynch pitched her that fast ball over the middle she had been waiting for (at precisely the moment she was set to give up and become a yoga instructor) in "Mulholland Drive" that she hit out of the ballpark.

This is a good, solid, noir film of three people who have screwed up their lives with carelessness and substance abuse desperately seeking another chance. I would like it on DVD. It holds up well with levels revealed with each viewing (the subtleties of the scene where Joe Mantegna first buys the sisters lunch...).

I saw this movie back in '99 before I knew who Naomi Watts was, but after seeing it, I made sure to take note of her name in the credits.

One thing that I found interesting in this film was their un-cliched use of smoking. In most films, a person only smokes if there is some dramatic reason to due so (eg. To look seductive/sexy, or to show they are bad or "naughty"), but in this film the two sisters just... smoked, plain and simple, and they did so in a manner that made them come across as believable, everyday people. I think there was even a line in there somewhere where Joe's character asks about Naomi's smoking and she replies that her and her sister started when they were kids. A very real scenario, again adding to the characters' believability.

I don't smoke myself so I'm not an advocate of the habit, but everything that can be said about this film already has been said in prior comments and so this was simply something different that came to my attention.

B-flick. A bunch of people after a bunch of money. Sound familiar? "Persons Unknown" tells of an ex-cop with an unreconciled past who falls in with a couple of babes resulting in a tiny bit of sex, a little bit of action, and a big fat bit of drama. Though the film smacks of the usual Hollywood contrivances, such as killing off all the unnecessary characters as an easy fix for dangling loose ends, it does manage to develop interesting relationships between the principals. Is this a good movie? Probably not. It is worth watching? If you're into crime dramas and happen upon it on cable, probably so. If nothing else you'll get Matenga, Lynch, Watts, some early Hickenlooper, and the option of surfing on. (C+)