Film Review - A Complete Unknown (2025)

A Complete Unknown is directed by James Mangold who you may remember from such films as Ford V Ferrari and Walk the Line and this time he tackles the life and times of Bob Dylan (Timothee Chalamet) and his rise to fame, meeting Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook) as well as Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) and Sylvie (Elle Fanning.)

A Complete Unknown is a movie I very much enjoyed and first off it is due to the confident and assured direction of James Mangold, this is not the messy and heavy green screen direction of his Indiana Jones film the Dial of Destiny from 2023 but instead this is the precise and assured Mangold that made Ford V Ferrari in 2019, every moment in the 141 minute runtime feels like it is here for a reason and like in Ford V Ferrari the runtime barely drags.

And the second reason is the cast, Chalamet has really come into his own as an actor since doing Wonka and the Dune films and here he shows once again what a great talent he has become nailing not only Bob Dylan’s speaking voice but also the singing, one song in particular I was very happy to hear him do in the film, Boyd Holbrook is almost unrecognizable as Johnny Cash in fact I thought it was Timothy Olyphant when watching the film, Edward Norton is also very good as Pete Seeger while Elle Fanning and Monica Barbaro are good as well as Bob’s on again off again love interests.

If there is a failing with the film its that the storytelling hits a lot of the familiar notes of these kinds of films, young kid wants to get famous in music, he gets there and finds himself stuck in the bog of fame and wanting to create and how he wants to try other things and others just want him to do more of the same, nothing new here but Mangold does it well enough that it didn’t overly bother me much.

And so that was A Complete Unknown and it is a very good film and worth seeing when you get a chance, 3 and a half out of 5.