Unknown

"Unknown" has some easily quantifiable pleasures. Particularly if you're a moviegoer currently enjoying Liam Neeson's career renaissance as a not-nearly-as-cerebral-as-you-might-have-expected action hero of a certain age. As in "Taken," his 2008 sleeper you-bet-your-ass-vengeance-is-mine hit, Neeson plays a character who gets to demonstrate certain lethal skills with some frequency, and with a similar attendant righteousness. So there's that.

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Related: More on Liam Neeson | See photos of January Jones

Diane Kruger, as the young woman in a jam who is forced to throw her lot in with Neeson's character, thus finding herself in an even bigger jam (any of this sounding familiar yet ... already?), capitalizes on what, for lack of a better term, we'll call the guy-movie cred she built with Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds." She turns in an engaging, energetic performance unencumbered by the faux-heaviness that marred her presence in such self-serious overdetermined turkeys as "Troy." The supporting cast is rounded out by conscientious pros and world-cinema faves such as Aidan Quinn, Frank Langella, Sebastian Koch and the very great Bruno Ganz.

The story line -- from its seemingly banal outset, with brainiac Neeson and his trophy wife arriving in Berlin to address a science conference, and then getting pretty messed up as Neeson goes into a brief coma after a cab mishap, and wakes up to a world where nobody, not even said trophy wife, knows who he is, and where, aw hell, another man has taken his place, and so on -- moves briskly. Director Jaume Collet-Serra classes up his act after the opportunistic pseudo-thrills of "House of Wax" and "Orphan" and applies his studio-approved technical proficiency to something a little more, erm, substantive, which at least yields some better-than-acceptable suspense/action set pieces. And January Jones, as the aforementioned trophy wife, looks fabulous.

So "Unknown" has got all that going, if you will, for it. However. As you may have noticed from the ads, the whole enterprise seems to hinge on a plot hook -- that is, who are the bad people who have robbed poor ticked-off Liam Neeson of his identity and of his hot wife from "Mad Men"? -- the resolution of which, if you don't guess it right off the bat, is likely to annoy the heck out of all but the most tolerant and serene of action/suspense thriller fans. And more I cannot say, without perpetuating a spoiler.

Of course, our movie and movie-reviewing culture has gotten so thoroughly self-conscious that even mentioning that one might be perpetuating a spoiler is, in a sense, perpetuating a spoiler. So rather than get too tangled up in it, I'm just going to come out and say -- no, I'm not gonna give away a spoiler here -- I'm just gonna say that if you don't like the plot twist that "Unknown" builds up to (and I'd bet money you're not gonna like it, because it'll remind you too much of ... well, see, I can't really say it; you understand my problem here?), well, just don't blame me, OK? While the trailers are telling you to go in for the plot twist, I'm telling you that if you're going in, go in for anything/everything but the plot twist. You'll have a better time. I know that once I got over it and relaxed a bit, I was better able to enjoy the European settings, Jones' outfits, that one great explosion, the inexplicable dropping of the name "Cronenberg" in certain key portions of dialogue, and so on.

So take my advice, when and if you see "Unknown": Turn off your "I hope this plot twist is awesome" part of your brain and just enjoy big, gruff, increasingly Frankenstein-monster-looking Neeson kicking the crap out of everyone who gets in his way, pausing only occasionally to register that existential anxiety that comes with literally not knowing who one is. You'll thank me for this. Really.

Glenn Kenny is chief film critic for MSN Movies. He was the chief film critic for Premiere magazine from 1998 to 2007. He contributes to various publications and websites, and blogs at http://somecamerunning.typepad.com. He lives in Brooklyn.