In Memory, Liam Neeson plays an aging hitman with early onset Alzheimer’s. If you take out Liam Neeson, and just have that one simple pitch line, that actually could make for an intriguing movie. But Neeson is there, and given that Memory is a 2022 movie, you can pretty much figure out what kind of movie it’s going to be. To put it bluntly, it’s a bad one. Like, really, really bad.
The movie follows Neeson’s Alex Lewis, who wants to retire from his hitman life. But of course, his handlers pull him in for one last job. One job, two targets, and he’s out. But when he discovers the second target is a teenage girl, he refuses to finish the job. She was the victim of a sex-trafficking operation, and was a loose thread that needed to be taken care of. This poses a problem for Alex, as now the target switches to his back. But when the girl ends up murdered anyway, he decides to exact revenge on those responsible, and maybe bring down the entire operation in the process.
As mentioned off the top, there is potential for a really good movie with this premise. Add in the fact Martin Campbell (GoldenEye, Casino Royale) directed, and the misfire becomes even more disappointing. The movie could have used Alex’s memory troubles to turn itself into more of a twisyt, psychological thriller. But instead, it barely even factors into the events of the story. It gets pushed to the side so much that had it not been included at all, the movie would have effectively been exactly the same.
And not only that, but it fails on the action front too. Neeson is 69 now. He can’t move like he used to, and the movie has to compensate for that. He’s often just standing around shooting, moving a only a little (and slowly), if at all. Even when he does throw fisticuffs, it’s only a quick series of a small handful of moves. With the action set pieces centered around him, they all end up bland and unexciting.
Like the hitman with memory problems hook, the larger story held some promise too. The hired killer working in the shadows to help the FBI take down a sex-trafficking ring is absolutely a premise that can work. But the story is set up in such a convoluted way. It takes what should be a fairly straightforward premise and makes it unnecessarily confusing. It ends up feeling like pieces several different (and probably better) movies kind of thrown in and mixed together to make Memory.
The only – and I mean only in the very literal sense – thing keeping Memory from being a complete and total failure is Guy Pearce. As FBI agent Vincent Serra, he’s the only person here giving a remotely interesting performance. It helps that he’s actually trying, something that can’t be said for the rest of the cast. Neeson can sleepwalk through this kind of role, and at times it feels like he’s doing just that. Monica Bellucci is surprisingly bad as the powerful businesswoman heading up the sex-trafficking ring.
It’s Pearce’s Serra who gets an emotional investment on any level. From screen time, he’s arguably the main character. And Memory would have been a better movie had it been made with this idea in mind, with Neeson’s hitman as the clear side character. But it tries to paint Alex as the lead, and a weirdly sympathetic one at that. He’s a hired killer, but because he won’t kill a child, that’s supposed to make him the good guy? Memory clearly wants us to be on his side, but the only thing he has going for him is that he’s not as bad as the “real” bad guys here.
Memory is simply an all-around mess. It’s such a shame to see Neeson’s career go so consistently in this direction. Let’s not forget the man is an Oscar-nominated actor. Sure, it was all the back in 1994 for Schindler’s List, but the fact remains. Just a few years later, he was great again as the titular character in Michael Collins. The point being, he’s showcased his acting chops before, and in roles that weren’t so action-focused. Even if the rest of his career his marked by these less-than action thrillers, hopefully he’ll get at least one more role that he can sink his teeth into, something that really allows him to act.
Score: 30/100 (yes it’s even somehow worse than Blacklight)
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