The Art of Forgetting: a review of the Liam Neeson action film "Memory"
The warlike Liam Neeson once again cleanses the world of filth -- in a powerless thriller that has almost no chance of capturing the viewer's attention.
Alex Lewis (Liam Neeson) is an experienced assassin suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. The lone wolf is slowly losing his memory, so working for questionable individuals in Mexico no longer seems promising. But retirement is postponed when the killer is assigned another case, which he fails: Alex discovers a whole network engaged in child trafficking. Moral code does not allow the killer to deal with a teenage girl involved in the shady business of a certain powerful Davana Silman (Monica Bellucci). On the side of the law, FBI agent Vincent Serra (Guy Pearce) also tries to reach out to the criminal gang - now the veteran killer Alex has to deal with both law enforcement agents and vengeful customers who want to remove Alex for not fulfilling the contract.
Liam Neeson, 69, continues to stew in his own juice in cheap movies for VOD-services, adding more and more rotten tomatoes to the product of his creativity (movie ratings on aggregator sites will not let you lie). Honestly earning his retirement, the British actor with the same prowess is involved in chases and shootings, as if since the first "Hostage" has not passed decades: the action in trains, hospitals, airports, on snow-covered roads - all in force even with decrepit bones. Neeson's latest work has willy-nilly defibrillated the third-rate action movie genre, which audiences have studiously forgotten when they see the belligerent faces of Bruce Willis, John Travolta and Steven Seagal again. The era of their unprejudiced masculine parade is thankfully gone. But the Neeson era is not yet.
The new film is also without the cat in the bag. If in the recent Game of Shadows Neeson uncovered a conspiracy of intelligence agents and fought the rotting corrupt echelons of power, here he does much the same. Only in the status of a professional assassin, an uncommonly unsightly anti-hero with a riddled soul and a fragile memory. By some cosmic irony, he is accompanied by Guy Pearce, star of Nolan's Remember, the leading film about the problems of a man with anterograde amnesia. Only here the hero's illness turns out not to be an important plot and character gestalt, but a useless whistleblower. When it becomes clear that solving the case and finding dirt on the powerful tycoon (the spectacular but completely unnecessary Monica Bellucci) will not be easy, because the sick mercenary simply forgot the location of the flash drive, you begin to watch the picture with sadness - the guns hanged along the script structure are shot past. Guy Pearce with his characteristic sullen pacing doesn't save the day either - even where the actor does try to play, it feels like his character was stolen from some better film.
"Flashback" is a symbiosis of "Sicario," "Hostage" and "Remember," written and filmed on the run: with American-Mexican landscapes and problems (wasn't that what the recent "The Advocate" with the same Neeson was about?), with a belligerent hero on the guard of justice (he still saves defenseless girls and is willing to die for truth) and a deep psychological hole in which the central character gradually dissolves. But to equal the aforementioned films, or even just to keep up a proper appearance for a genre film with shootouts, "Flashback" is toothless to a point. It's also difficult for Martin Campbell, who once directed one of the most spectacular "Bonds," successfully diversifying the mythology of Agent 007, and now fills the plot with tedious cat-and-mouse. We should not forget that Campbell's work is a remake of the Belgian "Alzheimer's Syndrome", obliged by all Hollywood standards to add dynamics, spice and drive to the old story. But it turned out exactly the opposite: most of the time the characters hang around uncomfortable locations and rooms, trying to verbally appeal to the law and to the conscience of the villains. There is a crisis of action cinema as a genre, which lacks not only the ingenuity and skillful equilibrium with guns and fists, but also the budgets - it seems that films like "Flashback" today are stamped with a run and without much preparation.
It also says a lot about the film that in the abundance of procedural clichés (the agents look for the elusive hero, but he shows up himself to scold the feds) the best moments of Flashback are... the most absurd ones. Except for the episodes where Neeson pours liquor on an open wound and then sets his bullet hole on fire, you, like the dementia-stricken hero, will quickly forget everything.
This article was sponsored by Michael Behm
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