PLOT: A world-weary assassin (Liam Neeson) with Alzheimer’s attempts to dismantle a cartel of child traffickers before he loses himself to dementia. He’s being hunted by an FBI agent (Guy Pearce) and his team, who are looking to stop the same cartel through legal means.
REVIEW: It would be a pretty big understatement to say that I’ve been underwhelmed by Liam Neeson’s last few action movies. He’s been doing the same role in too many run-of-the-mill b-flicks for a long time now, and you need to look back to Cold Pursuit for his last half-decent action flick. Luckily, Martin Campbell’s Memory is a significant step up from Blacklight and Honest Thief, even if it’s ultimately uneven, with only a few choice moments showcasing its director’s flair for action.
Campbell, who made two of the best James Bond movies ever (Goldeneye and Casino Royale) in addition to The Mask of Zorro and the cult classic No Escape, is a specialist as far as action movies go. A few years ago, he directed Jackie Chan in the underrated pic The Foreigner, and just last year made a pretty serviceable Maggie Q/ Michael Keaton actioner called The Protégé. He knows exactly how to make a movie like this, and for about half of its running time, Memory ranks with Nesson’s best action movies.
A remake of a Belgian thriller called The Alzheimer Case, in it Neeson plays an assassin who’s starting to suffer the effects of the condition. He knows it’s only a matter of time until he ends up like his institutionalized brother, who suffers from the same disorder. Wanting the retire, he instead takes a job where he’s ordered to kill a child, who he discovers is a victim of trafficking recently rescued by Guy Pearce’s FBI agent. He refuses the assignment, but the girl is killed anyway, so Neeson decides to declare war on a cartel of child traffickers run by Monica Bellucci’s magnate, Davana Sealeman. Among her assets is a detention center her depraved son uses as fodder for victims, but her political power keeps it hushed up.
While it may sound like a run-of-the-mill thriller, what makes it interesting is that Neeson’s condition worsens quickly, and we only really get the badass version of Neeson in the movie’s first half. In this part of the movie, Campbell emphasizes Neeson’s size and speed, making him come off as deadlier than he’s been since Taken, but in the second half, he emphasizes his vulnerability. There’s a scene where he gets brutally beaten by Ray Stevenson as a cop protector of Bellucci’s that I doubt many action stars would be willing to submit to. Neeson has never been ego-driven and seems fine taking a backseat at times to Guy Pearce, who starts to emerge as the movie’s real hero.
Pearce plays the part in a low-key way. Rather than play a badass cop on the edge, instead, he’s a low-key agent just trying his best to do things legally. He’s not depicted as physically tough, but he brings empathy to the part in a way that makes him believable. He probably has the best secondary part an actor’s ever had in a solo Neeson action flick. By contrast, Bellucci, who’s still drop-dead gorgeous, chews the scenery a bit, making her character a touch cartoonish at times. We’re supposed to believe she wields considerable political power, but this is never really evoked, although that’s likely less her fault than the people behind the film.
This brings me to why Memory, despite having many of the elements needed, isn’t quite as slam-bang of a thriller as it could have been. For one thing, it’s inconsistent. It starts off as action-packed but becomes talky, and the screenplay isn’t quite sharp enough for it to pivot into being a character and plot-driven drama. Certain roles, such as Stevenson’s and even Bellucci’s, seem cartoonish or stock, which seems inappropriate in a film that centers around child trafficking. More realistic baddies were needed.
Even still, Memory is a cut above as far as Neeson action movies go. While inconsistent, he’s top-notch, as is Pearce. It probably won’t be considered a Neeson classic, but even if you’re sick of his action flicks, this one is worth a shot, and it’s better than average in terms of his recent output.