With an intriguing twist and a first-rate supporting cast, this film’s a cut above the actor’s standard revenge thrillers.
In a dimly lit and sparsely populated health club, a bearded man in sweats and over-the-ear headphones grinds it out on a treadmill that’s facing the parking lot. A hooded figure emerges from the pounding rain and the murky night, steadily approaching the window and pulling out a gun with a silencer—and just like that, the running man is a dead man, crumpled up on the gym floor. It’s a scene of elegantly constructed, final violence, and it’s one of the many moments when the taut revenge thriller “Memory” proves to be a little more elevated than just another B-movie actioner starring the nearly 70-year-old Liam Neeson, who can still cut to the chase with a sharp line reading and still take down cocky henchmen half his age in hand-to-hand combat. (When will these henchmen ever learn!) In the 14 years since the first “Taken” movie with Neeson as retired CIA operative Bryan Mills telling his daughter’s captors about his “very particular set of skills,” cementing Neeson’s status as an all-time Action Movie Icon, the great Irish thespian has appeared in close to 50 films, alternating between prestige projects and often entertaining but fairly disposable action fare.
