Alex Lewis.

Liam Neeson loves money and nothing proves that more than the fact that this man does his own counterfeit films. Directed by Martin Campbell (Green Lantern, Casino Royale) and written by Dario Scardapane (2017 Punisher show), Memory is such a formulaic movie that I found its script online when it was originally written back in 2001.

Memory is a 2022 film starring Liam Neeson as Alex Lewis, an assassin who one day finds himself in a bit of a pickle. He’s been assigned to assassinate a child and Alex Lewis doesn’t assassinate no children. That child is Beatriz Leon played by Mia Sanchez. After learning that the girl is a victim and witness in a child sex trafficking ring, Lewis refuses the job. Unfortunately in the world of assassins, you don’t just refuse a job. As a result, Lewis must hunt down the group perpetuating the crime ring while also fighting off other assassins who want his ass dead.

Meanwhile everyone is being pursued by the FBI including Vincent Serra (Guy Pearce) and Linda Amistead (Taj Atwal) along with Mexican police officer Hugo Marquez (Harold Torres). Monica Belucci plays bad girl Davana Sealmen with Josh Taylor playing her son Randy. Randy is more than just his name in this movie. So half the movie is the police investigating and trying to track down the criminals and also Alex because he’s a hitman and thus also a criminal.

In case you’re wondering, the movie is called Memory because Liam Neeson’s character is suffering from Alzheimer’s and considering Neeson himself is 71 he plays the part quite well. In fact the only thing Liam Neeson seems to remember is that pumping out these action films by the dozens makes him a lot of money, and for a man closing in on the end of his career a sliding scale of shameless clones is the best one can hope for.

What I’m saying is Liam Neeson is no Clint Eastwood.

Which isn’t to say the movie is all bad. While he may have relegated himself to a lot of shlocky crap, Liam Neeson rarely ever seems to phone in a performance. The cast of characters is pretty great even if their dialogue is routinely terrible and stuffed in the ass with every cliche you’ve heard from the last forty years of cop dramas. I did enjoy Guy Pearce’s acting in this movie.

Memory is so formulaic that I’m going to go for the obvious joke. It might not be a terrible movie, but you’re probably not going to remember this one long after the credits role. Dario had the easiest writing job in Hollywood this year.

Rating: C+