Memory is forgettable. That's it. That's the review. Try the veal!
OK, a bit more then. Memory is a remake of a 2003 Belgian movie called The Memory of the Killer about an aging assassin dealing with rapidly onrushing Alzheimer's. Liam Neeson, everyone's favorite AARP tough guy now that Clint Eastwood is over 90, stars as Alex, a man with a special set of skills (whoops, wrong franchise) which begin and end with killing. While he's still able to fulfill his contracts while pushing 70, he's becoming forgetful and though he wants to retire, he's given the usual One More Job Which Will Test His Conscience.
Despite whacking his first target with impunity, he balks at killing a 13-year-old girl who was being sex trafficked by her father. When she ends up dead anyway, he seeks to avenge her while being pursued by FBI Agent Guy Pearce who had killed her father during a bust gone bad. The convoluted plot involves sex trafficking of minors held in the El Paso ICE detention facility and Very Important People would be fine if anyone who knows about these escapades ended up dead.
While there is some promise in the premise and I recall hearing that the original is a good movie (I own the DVD, but haven't watched it), Neeson seems forgotten half the time as other threads of the spaghetti logic plot are followed. He growls a lot and kicks ass a few times, but it's getting tired and old, sort of like Neeson at 69.
Frankly, the most fascinating detail about Memory was its cast, specifically that barring the handful of Mexican/Hispanic actors, everyone I looked up wasn't American. Neeson (Irish), Pearce (Australian), an aging-badly Monica Bellucci (Italian), Ray Stephenson (Irish), Pearce's partner Taj Nawal (looks Indian, is British), his angry cliche superior Ray Fearon (black, is English), even the DOJ guy is Belgian, I think and down the line, not a single American played any of these American characters. Must've been some condition of the financing, but it's weird; you'd never be allowed to make a movie in England with an all-American cast.
Slow, unsatisfying, and all puns intended, feel free to forget about Memory.
Score: 3/10. Skip it.
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