114 min | R | April 29, 2022 | Open Road Films
An aging assassin takes a contract in El Paso, then refuses to kill a child and becomes the target himself. The catch is that early Alzheimer’s is erasing his memory faster than he can cover his tracks. Great hook, ordinary movie.
Alex Lewis is a contract killer working in El Paso. He is also losing his mind. Early-stage Alzheimer’s eats his recall in real time, and the film hangs its hook on a single complication. He refuses a job that involves a child, and the people who hired him decide he is now a liability. Martin Campbell builds a thriller around a killer who cannot trust his own memory, but the movie keeps reaching for a procedural about human trafficking and a tired cop instead of staying with the man who forgets why he walked into a room.
Liam Neeson plays Alex as a tired professional who scribbles reminders on his forearm in ballpoint pen. The conceit gives him something to act against, and his best moments come when he stares at his own writing and cannot place the name. Guy Pearce plays FBI agent Vincent Serra with a low simmer that the script never lets boil. Monica Bellucci plays real estate magnate Davana Sealman as a cold fixer, but the part is a silhouette of a villain rather than a person. Harold Torres and Taj Atwal play Serra’s partners and exist mainly to absorb exposition.
Campbell directs from a script by Dario Scardapane, a remake of the Belgian film The Memory of a Killer. He knows how to stage a clean action sequence, and a parking-garage hit lands with the economy you expect from the man who made Casino Royale. The cinematography paints El Paso in flat institutional blues and beiges that drain the border setting of texture. The editing cross-cuts between Alex and Serra so often that neither thread gains momentum. The score underlines tension that the structure has already dissipated.
The premise promises a man racing his own deterioration. The film delivers a standard revenge plot with a medical subplot stapled on. Neeson commits, and the Alzheimer’s angle occasionally cuts through the formula to suggest the better film buried underneath. Memory keeps choosing the procedural over the tragedy, and it forgets its own best idea long before the credits.