Here's a case of double amnesia, in which a second case of the disease is overlain over the first (as usual, once the amnesia genie is activated, screenwriters cry havoc and let slip the dogs of anything goes).
Our hero, played by a tired Liam Neeson, awakes from a coma not remembering much but thinking he's Dr. Martin Harris, a geneticist. He has no identification, and no one knows him, even his young wife. Turns out, he's not Dr. Harris at all, but a professional assassin who has somehow forgotten that his alias is an alias. It takes an innocent new girlfriend and several car chases and some highly-choreographed fist fights before he comes to his senses. Once he realizes that he's a professional killer, however, he turns over a new leaf and becomes a Good Guy. He thwarts the intended assassination and with solemn steps and slow, begins a new moral life.
Here's the question that occurred to me: a guy is a long-time, career assassin. He has an accident and forgets that he was a murderer. Then little by little he remembers. Is it probable that his personality would change and he would be reborn to innocence and good citizenship, I only ask because that's the red herring that Unknown's audience is asked to masticate? I myself don't buy it.
Neeson asks, over and over, "Who am I?" In serious works of literature (cf. Lear's "Who is it that can tell me who I am'), such a question is tragic. In amnesia movies, "Who am I" is not tragic but merely mcguffinic.
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