by Scott Batchelor, Contributing Writer
Memory is the latest film in a string of Liam Neeson-driven action movies. Each one seemingly with the main goal: concoct a scenario to make up an excuse for Neeson to throw a punch or two or three. Ever since 2007’s Taken, Neeson’s paved the way for old-guy-kicks-ass movies. Sadly though, nothing has been able to recapture the magic from the trailer’s gimmick. Memory continues the trend of simple concepts that could have been better.
This film’s simple elevator pitch is a lot more fascinating than what we actually get. What happens if a hitman suffers from memory loss? Not like the Jason Bourne version, but what if he can’t remember if he has killed a target? Instead, what we get is Neeson’s character Alex Lewis suffering from bouts of memory loss due to Alzheimer’s and only mild bouts that largely don’t come into play, almost ever. This film may be called Memory, but it is a movie that seemingly forgets what it wants to be every step of the way.
The core rule of storytelling is broken early on when we are merely told that Alex is an incredible hitman, but we only see one of his hits. It is a brutal kill that makes you think this is going to lean hard into the R rating, but this is about as R as it gets. This movie could have gone PG-13, and in fact, I think it should have. People are already tired of Neeson action movies, so restricting the audience is not a great sell.
We are then introduced to Guy Pearce’s Vince Serra, already deep into a sex trafficking investigation but that is all we learn. We see the investigation going south, and Vince has to convince the superiors that there is more to look into. His team consists of partner Maya (Stella Stocker) and Policía Federal Ministerial (PFM) Hugo (Harold Torres), neither of whom really serve a purpose. Hugo is memorable for often being denied access to any crime scenes because he is not FBI, and Maya acts as the surrogate for the audience.
With these character introductions, the movie is now firmly split in two. One is a police thriller and the other is an action movie about a hitman, and neither is that interesting. The investigation talks in circles, often covering the same ground without adding anything new, and the action movie is light on the action. It is hard to invest in either story when it is unclear what the goal for either character is.
Because we have two stories, we have two separate sources of exposition that are clunky. It feels like the actors were only given one take, and that is what is used. Even Pearce can’t save the dialogue and he sure is trying. The only reason characters talk is to give information to the audience, because everyone in the scene is already on the same page. It creates a number of situations where nobody is truly selling the scene they are in, and without the proper talents to spin the scene into something believable, the audience is left without any cause to invest in anything, which is this film’s biggest issue.
With both parts of the movie rolling along at a snail’s pace, we don’t invest in either story. It takes way too long to really put our characters together, and it doesn’t even do that in any way reassembling effort. Alex is tasked with taking a hit out on the witness Vince is tasked with protecting, but Alex doesn’t go through with it. The natural progression of this story should be that both men become reluctant allies in taking down an evil ring of sex traffickers, but we don’t get that.
Instead we get a movie that tries to pull off what so few movies can accomplish, and that is to create a compelling story where both good guy and bad guy are nuanced enough to make us want them both to win, even though we know good should come out on top. Think Heat — both characters moving around the city like it’s a chess board. But here they are playing checkers. No. Even checkers is too advanced for this movie. These characters are playing the card game war. Everything that happens is completely random, and no thought actually goes into any action made. Without the groundwork for future actions, we get a discombobulated movie that just throws a bunch of scenes together that barely makes sense.
The one positive I will touch on is Neeson does seem like he is putting some effort into his role. While his character is not as interesting as the title suggests, he plays old and aging well. When he gets hurt, it stays with him. This is not a young buck who is walking off gunshots and punches. There is an incredible scene where he performs first aid on himself and it looks really cool. Albeit, it’s pretty ridiculous, but I am all in for it.
The absolute worst part about this movie is its run time. It is nearly two hours long and it drags. The first half hour goes on and on with nothing interesting. They almost do something interesting in the second act but never follow through. The third act goes in a direction I did not sign up for and never wanted. And then it ends. I wasn’t ready for the ending at all because it was so abrupt. I thought we were going to get into something much deeper, but that never comes. The conclusion to the film hits so hard that I was left reeling as to what I just watched.
My biggest question, though, is, why is this movie called Memory? Is it because I have no memory of what happened in the previous scene? The memory loss part of this movie almost never comes into play. They try to shoehorn it in at the beginning, but this is one of those movies that uses an idea in the first draft but they kept writing the movie and never go back and do any touchups to make the movie fit together. Memory had an idea that seems interesting on paper, but the execution was flawed beyond anything being something I can recommend.
Score: 2/10
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