Language: English
Devoid of context, Martin Campbell’s Memory is a lesser and tropier lovechild of Memento and Sicario. A hitman struggling with memory loss turns on a powerful client that runs a child trafficking racket behind a detention center business at the US-Mexico border. He writes on his arms so that he remembers the specifics of his contracts. Throw in a haunted FBI agent (played by the star of Memento), a hot-headed Mexican colleague, a complicit Texan law enforcement system and Monica Bellucci as an evil mastermind – and Memory is hardly a memorable film. As a Hollywood remake of a Belgian movie based on a novel called De Zaak Alzheimer, it’s also hardly original. That much of it relies on the assassin’s strict no-killing-kids code brings to mind the core conflict of In Bruges. The hitman-helping-cops template brings to mind the superhero vigilantism of Batman.
With context, though, Memory is quite a poignant movie. It stars Liam Neeson, who on first glance seems to be playing the most Liam Neeson role possible. He’s cold-blooded and pained and jaded, single-handedly avenging the atrocities of American civilization with moral precision. But there’s more to the premise than meets the (tired) eye. A sense of self-referential angst underpins the story. In a way, this film is Neeson’s own The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, except it’s not spoofy but serious.
With Memory, the 69-year-old actor joins the long list of aging artists who’ve been exploring their mortality as a canvas for art.
If Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar for channelling his fragile oldness into the dementia-afflicted drama of The Father, Liam Neeson does the same in a genre he has come to symbolise over the years.
The alzheimer's-afflicted action of Memory is infused with the actor’s oldness: Neeson plays a man who wants to retire from the assassin life because of his fading health. The film starts off with his character, Alex, smoothly pulling off a job in a Mexican hospital, only to realise he’s forgotten a crucial detail. At another point, when he sees the news telecast of a hitjob, he asks the woman in his bed if she’s sure he was next to her all night. He isn’t sure himself. His reflexes have not slowed, but his muscle memory is a problem.
That a broken Alex decides to retire only to be sucked back into the world – a fractured consciousness triggers a fuller conscience – paints a picture of the veteran actor, who has always been considered better than the work he chooses to do. Alex’s predicament is practically a confession about the abusive relationship between Liam Neeson and his patented revenge-action thrillers. He wants out, perhaps, but there’s still a sense of integrity – like Alex drawing the line at the killing of children – about the way Neeson does a job that has both defined and drained him.
Which is why, in Memory, we see insurance in the form of other like-minded characters: like Guy Pearce’s FBI agent Vincent, who is visibly Alex’s spiritual surrogate but also a protagonist in his own right. Vincent and his colleagues become a crutch for an actor who is too old to single-handedly carry this genre, as well as for a protagonist who is too old to blow up the system. Alex makes mistakes, gets wounded, looks far from invincible and is reckless with collateral damage. He fails to protect the few people he cares about. He can’t fix things alone anymore, and Neeson shows great heart by diluting his own stereotype.
Due to his vulnerable performance, Memory transcends its narrative tone and turns into a sociocultural statement. It becomes about more than just Alex and his faded action-hero image. The inner frictions of El Paso – between the local police force and the FBI, between capitalism and justice, between the bitter Mexican cops and their Washington-fearing American counterparts – elevate the film. The writing doesn’t shy away from being frank and nihilistic about the US Border Control situation.
The “villain,” a 50-something estate mogul named Davana Sealman, is regularly told by her physician that she has a 35-year-old’s heart: a riff on actress Monica Bellucci’s famed agelessness. In Alex’s journey, two female characters are introduced at different points – a 13-year-old girl and a beautiful sex worker. Both might have easily turned Memory into a typical hitman-humanisation movie, where the women “rescue” a hopeless man. But to its credit, the film is self-aware enough to suggest that the story is bigger than a hitman and his unlikely alliances. It ties well into the film’s larger awareness about its lead actor and his legacy.
I like movies that depend on our experience of movies. For instance, if someone hasn’t seen enough of Liam Neeson in the last decade, the deftness of Memory might be lost on them. For someone who swears by all the titles mentioned in the lede, Memory might feel like a cheap copout. But some of the best stories seldom exist in a vacuum. Some of the best art emerges from the deconstruction of ego – both as an artist and an audience. In that sense, Memory thrives on remembering and forgetting at once. It’s not great, but maybe it’s something far more valuable: it’s honest. How often can one say that about a movie based on a hired killer having a change of heart?
Memory is running in cinemas
Rating: 3/5
Rahul Desai is a film critic and programmer, who spends his spare time travelling to all the places from the movies he writes about.
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