Briarcliff Entertainment
Earlier this year, Liam Neeson was in the fairly mediocre action movie Blacklight, which tried to add a twist to the now worn out Liam Neeson action movie formula by presenting him as a near unstoppable force who was morally conflicted. The movie that started it all, Taken, only had the twist that an older Neeson was the biggest badass in the world — but then they just kept making more and more films that were nearly the same thing. So you really hope for some sort of new idea.
Memory comes from director Martin Campbell and writer Dario Scardapane, adapted from the Belgian film The Alzheimer Case, which I have not seen so I can’t compare it to this one. Here Neeson once again plays a badass, this time an assassin for hire who is indeed having symptoms of Alzheimer’s. The idea of an assassin who’s losing track of reality is an interesting one, but the movie never really takes full advantage of it.
Neeson plays ‘Alex’ (not that it really matters much, as his name is rarely used), and the movie kicks off when he refuses to kill a young teenage girl who’s a victim of sex trafficking. I suppose he has a ‘code’ but this is also not really explored much, as instead we’re thrown into a fairly typical cops and robbers angle.
At the same time, federal agents are on the case, led by one played by Guy Pearce — known for his own far superior memory loss movie Memento. This movie gives perhaps unintentional homage to that when Alex writes notes on his arm to remember things — something that again is not really explored well.
Pearce’s character is fairly boilerplate, he plays the agent who realizes that this ‘bad guy turned good’ might be worth paying attention to amidst ‘the rich and powerful’ folk working against him. His partner, played by Taj Atwal, is a bit more interesting as a character, and feels like she could’ve been a more major player in the movie.
The movie’s ‘villain’ is sinister real estate lady Davana Sealman (Monica Bellucci) trying to keep herself out of trouble with her mysterious ‘money’ powers, but her particular character is so underwritten she’s the opposite of a compelling villain. This lack of a good villain presents a real problem for Neeson’s character, but despite that the movie isn’t terrible.
Neeson manages to pull off some fairly decent, often brutal, action sequences, and his performance as the man slowly losing touch with reality is actually pretty good. There are no surprises in the plot, though, not that I really expected any. If you think of this as another typical Neeson ‘badass bad guy with a secret heart of gold’ movie, it’s certainly watchable if still fairly forgettable.
Really I just want to see something new from Neeson — he has an upcoming noir movie called Marlowe which adapts the Raymond Chandler character that hopefully will be a bit more interesting and unique — at this point it does sometimes feel that he’s doing these movies without even trying anymore.
Memory has a run time of 1 hour 54 minutes, and is rated R for violence, some bloody images and language throughout.
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