(2022) Memory - A Better Than Average Liam Neeson's Action Thriller

I saw the poster of this movie when I went to one of the cinemas few weeks ago in the coming soon section and thought it was an old film. But turned out it was only released in the US around 3 weeks ago and it's still pretty fresh when it premiered in Indonesia yesterday. My wife and I decided to see it last night so we have our weekend free. OK, why don't I get right to it.

Brief Story Line

Alex Lewis (Liam Neeson - The Ice Road, Blacklight etc) was a professional hitman who wanted to retire as he started to suffer memory loss. When his last assignment turned out to be something he was against principally, Alex became the target of the people he worked for.

Things became problematic when the FBI led by Agent Vincent Serra (Guy Pearce - Without Remorse TV series, Back to the Outback etc) with his partner Agent Amistead (Taj Atwal - Hullraisers TV series etc) and the Mexican police Hugo (Harold Torres) were chasing after him as well.

So what would happen to Alex and how would the story conclude? Find them all in this action thriller movie.

End of Brief Story Line

It has been a while since I was able to truly enjoy Liam Neeson's movies as in the past few years, they were not really that exceptional. This time though, I was enjoying it more than his previous 3 or 4 films. Yes he was actually very productive for his age, although majority were pretty standard movies. What I liked about this one was it actually has an interesting story, albeit a bit more complex. It did take us a while to really understand where it's going, especially with the seemingly unrelated incidents in the early part. But once we reached to a certain point, the story became more exciting and interesting.

In this movie, Liam Neeson might seem to play his usual character of tough guy. As the movie progressed though, we could see him being more humane. Even my wife felt this was the first time she saw Neeson really vulnerable, which I completely agreed. His counter part Guy Pearce was quite OK as the relentless FBI agent with the desire to solve the case, while the rest of the cast were pretty standard. Aside from the names I mentioned above, there were also the appearances of Monica Bellucci (The Passion of the Christ, Spectre etc) as real estate mogul Dayana Sealman, Ray Fearon (Coronation Street TV series etc) as Serra's superior Nussbaum and Ray Stevenson (Final Score, The Three Musketeers etc) as Detective Danny Mora.

The film's duration was pretty long as it had 113 minutes including closing credits which did not have any mid or post end credit scene. I also noticed that it was based on a novel titled De Zaak Alzheimer written by Jeff Geeraets and the Belgian movie adaptation with same title (English translation: The Memory of a Killer). As I have not seen that film, I could not make a comparison. However, it looked like that one was well received by critics and audience.

As an action thriller movie, this one to me has got some nice action involving Neeson but not the full action type and few graphic violence which explained the 17+ rating in Indonesia. The story was interesting and it has a pretty surprising but satisfying ending for us. Overall we were entertained by this movie and even if it took a bit of time to grasp the heavier than usual plot of Neeson's movies, we both enjoyed the film. So if you like to see a better than average Liam Neeson's movies, then you can give this a try. It's playing exclusively in the largest cinema chain in Indonesia.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars