Movie Review: Memory (2022)

Genre: Thriller  

Director: Martin Campbell  

Starring: Liam Neeson, Guy Pearce, Monica Bellucci, Taj Atwal  

Running Time: 114 minutes  

Synopsis: In the Texas-Mexico border region, aging assassin-for-hire Alex Lewis (Liam Neeson) is experiencing early signs of dementia, including memory loss. He refuses an assignment to kill a 13 year-old child trafficking victim and turns against his employers. Meantime, FBI agents Vincent Serra and Linda Amistead (Guy Pearce and Taj Atwal) and Mexico's agent Marquez (Harold Torres) are investigating a child trafficking ring, while wealthy real estate mogul Davana Sealman (Monica Bellucci) exerts influence and hides secrets.

What Works Well: This B-movie almost succeeds in covering up its low budget, aided by investments in side plots like creeping dementia, child trafficking, and high-level corruption. The presence of Liam Neeson (old for the role but functional), Guy Pearce (fittingly bedraggled), and Monica Bellucci (evil but underused) elevates quality, and they are ably supported by a feisty Taj Atwal. Ex-Bond director Martin Campbell keeps the action hopping with multiple converging storylines punctuated by controlled action scenes.

What Does Not Work As Well: The script tries too hard, and eventually becomes cluttered with several seemingly important characters making grand entrances only to be summarily dispatched. The creaky production values are exposed by some throwaway sequences and one glaring discontinuity where a crime scene magically relocates from a parkade to a highway. The rushed ending scatters loose ends all over the screen.

Conclusion: Neither instantly forgettable not terribly memorable.



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The Movies Of Monica Bellucci

All movies starring Monica Bellucci and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Under Suspicion (2000)

Tears Of The Sun (2003)

Shoot'Em Up (2007)

The Whistleblower (2010)

Spectre (2015)

Memory (2022)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Shoot'Em Up (2007)

A jocular action film, Shoot'Em Up embraces Bugs Bunny cartoon sensibilities in a manic save-the-baby adventure. With non-stop impetus and an irrepressible attitude, this is a thrill ride to savour.

In the middle of the night, carrot-munching loner Smith (Clive Owen) sticks his nose in other people's business by attempting to protect a pregnant woman running from a horde of assassins. She gives birth, but is then killed. Smith escapes with the baby, and becomes the target of Hertz (Paul Giamatti), who is intent on eliminating the infant.

Smith connects with lactating prostitute Donna (Monica Bellucci), who reluctantly agrees to help look after the newborn they now call Oliver. Hertz starts to uncover Smith's elite military background and assembles an army of goons to hunt him down. Smith has to shoot his way out of numerous jams while keeping Donna and Oliver safe. He also uncovers a baby-killing conspiracy involving an evil gun-manufacturing company and a shady political gambit.

Clocking in at a mere 86 minutes, Shoot'Em Up is breathlessly fun and ridiculously entertaining. Writer and director Michael Davis unapologetically parks logic at the door and conjures up a series of outrageous set-pieces, all delivered with panache and feasting on an endless supply of bullets and bad guys.

And several highlights represent brilliant action filmmaking, combining jaw-dropping stuntwork with spirited music and pointed editing. Hertz's army of similarly-dressed men invades Smith's walk-up apartment, and the shoot-out that follows is an adrenaline rush set to Motorhead's Ace Of Spades. Later, Smith drops out of an aircraft, and an exhilarating aerial free-fall battle follows. Back on the ground, wise use of seat belts is demonstrated in a high speed head-on crash. And just for good measure, Davis finds a way to combine yet another shoot-out with an energetic sex session.

The plot propelling the madness is just as knowingly outrageous, having something to do with a secret baby factory, an ailing political candidate, and the gun lobby. None of it is intended to make sense, and it doesn't. Meanwhile, Smith's background is revealed in droplets to colour-in a fittingly damaged protagonist. Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti enjoy themselves in gleeful performances, and cut through the carnage with the symmetrical respect of a cartoon anti-hero and his indestructible nemesis.

The guiltiest of guilty pleasures, Shoot'Em Up fires at will and scores perfect insanity.



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Movie Review: Tears Of The Sun (2003)

A war action movie, Tears Of The Sun has noble intentions to increase awareness of atrocities in Africa, but a feeble script never strikes the right tones.

A civil war erupts in Nigeria with the overthrow of democratically elected President Azuka by a brutal rebel army. The United States Navy conducts dangerous missions to extract foreign nationals from the unfolding chaos. Lieutenant Waters (Bruce Willis) of the Navy SEALs and his small unit of elite soldiers are tasked by Captain Rhodes (Tom Skerritt) to rescue Dr. Lena Kendricks (Monica Bellucci) from a remote medical mission.

With the rebel army closing in Waters and his men locate Kendricks, but she insists her patients also be rescued. Waters reluctantly agrees and leads a large group of civilians towards the rendezvous site with the extraction helicopters, evading rebel patrols along the way. But both the Lieutenant and the doctor are keeping secrets from each other, and an already hazardous mission gets much more complicated when Waters starts to care about the plight of civilians and gets his squadron involved in the conflict.

Co-produced by Willis, Tears Of The Sun delves into the dirty wars of the dark continent with eyes wide open. Director Antoine Fuqua leaves no doubt the film is intended as a shocking wake-up call to the brutalities that often go unreported, and the film stops and lingers as villagers are slaughtered, raped and set on fire, child soldiers are pressed into service and mothers are maimed and their infants killed.

While Willis and his men (including stock turns by Cole Hauser, Eamonn Walker and Nick Chinlund) are supposed to be the jaded veterans jolted into taking a stand by what they are witnessing, the script by Alex Lasker and Patrick Cirillo falls far short. With no character depth whatsoever, the film delivers plastic and prepackaged emotions and flat drama. Neither Waters nor Doctor Kendricks are provided any context or compelling intensity, and the Africans are all reduced to horribly shallow and stereotypical representations of helpless locals awaiting rescue by mostly white American men.

Stylistically Fuqua does better in portraying an eternally wet jungle aesthetic, and the few but fierce action scenes almost save the movie. One sequence features the SEALs stealthily moving against murderous rebels terrorizing a village, while the final battle is a climactic backs-against-the-wall, few-against-many epic showdown. The action is vivid, including relatively accurate portrayals of battlefield tactics.

But unfortunately Tears Of The Sun ends with a gag-inducing stand-and-cheer (literally) celebration of the all-conquering US military by ever grateful black locals, the film collapsing far from its intentions and into the most crass version of a recruitment tool targeting the easily influenced.

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Movie Review: Under Suspicion (2000)

An interrogation murder mystery, Under Suspicion establishes a tense premise and builds impetus before stumbling badly.

In Puerto Rico, influential lawyer Henry Hearst (Gene Hackman) and his wife Chantal (Monica Bellucci) are getting ready for a gala fundraising event when he is summoned by Police Captain Victor Benezet (Morgan Freeman) for a few questions. Victor and Detective Felix Owens (Thomas Jane) delve into Henry's version of events from the previous day, when he found the dead body of young girl while out jogging with a neighbourhood dog.

Victor and Felix suspect that Henry is hiding something, and when Henry starts to change some details of his story, the suspicions grow. Victor steers the interrogation towards Henry's strained relationship with Chantal, as well as Henry's whereabouts when an earlier murder of another young girl occurred a few weeks back. With Chantal impatiently waiting for her husband at the fundraiser, Henry's interrogation ordeal stretches into the night.

Directed by Stephen Hopkins and co-produced by Hackman and Freeman, Under Suspicion is a character study of a rich man hiding layers of secrets. With Hackman in fine form as Henry Hearst and Freeman and Jane providing the persistent prodding (calm and agitated, respectively), the film's premise provides rich soil to nurture a story of the miseries, frustrations and desires hiding behind facades of tuxedos, mansions and swanky evening gowns.

Intentionally or not, the film is also very much about two carefully planned and staged rapes and murders, the victims innocent young girls, with Henry in the vicinity of both crime scenes. Victor's objective for the night is to solve two heinous crimes, and shredding Henry's carefully cultivated image of success and confronting him with an impressive mound of circumstantial evidence is a means to an end.

With the foundation well constructed, the film's ending falls down in spectacular fashion. Accompanying Henry and Chantal to the smoldering wreck of their relationship core carries some merit, but not when all the other plot points, carefully cultivated over 110 minutes, are abandoned in a flash. Under Suspicion attempts a bait and switch, but sells itself short.

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Movie Review: The Whistleblower (2010)

A story of modern day human sex trafficking based on real events, The Whistleblower is an earnest and harrowing examination of a systemic abuse that the world prefers to ignore. The film perhaps achieves its purpose too well, leaving behind an empty feeling of overwhelming helplessness.

Nebraska police officer Kathryn Bolkovac (Rachel Weisz) has reached a dead end in her job advancement prospects. To expand her horizons, she joins a United Nations police training mission in Bosnia. The UN has contracted the mission's organization and logistics to a pivate sector company, resulting in limited oversight of what the UN personnel are actually up to. Once in Bosnia, Kathryn proves to be a champion of local women's causes and is promoted to head a department in charge of gender affairs.

She then stumbles across bars employing Ukraininan women held against their will and forced into protitution to pay off supposed debts. Both the local police force and the commanders of the UN mission are aware of the abuse, and indeed some of the UN personnel are active participants in exploiting the girls. When Kathryn tries to help Raya, one of the sex slaves, the attempt backfires and Raya faces even worse abuse from her captors. Kathryn seeks help from advocate Madeleine Rees (Vanessa Redgrave) and internal affairs officer Peter Ward (David Strathairn) to blow the whistle on the corruption in the ranks of the UN mission, putting her career and life in jeopardy.

Rachel Weisz delivers a powerful performance as Kathryn, and she is provided with enough of a background story to humanize her beyond the role of warrior for justice. Kathryn is divorced, short on money, and has lost the custody battle for her child. She carries these scars into Bosnia, and Weisz is excellent in portraying a woman fighting a lonely battle against demons from the front, the rear and within.

Vanessa Redgrave and David Strathairn lend weight to The Whistleblower in limited roles. Both appear in just a few scenes representing the officials who bothered to believe Kathryn and tried to help. Monica Bellucci also has a relatively small role as Laura Leviani, a UN official more interested in procedures and keeping the agency's nose clean than getting to the truth of the sex slave scandal.

First time Canadian director Larysa Kondrack keeps the focus on Kathryn but also gives Raya (an affecting Roxana Condurache), her friends and family ample screen time to put a face on the victims as they hurtle towards a harrowing fate.

Kathryn achieves a small victory at a great cost, and The Whistleblower's resonating message is the inability of any small group of individuals to stand in front of the insatiable momentum driving the sex trade across international borders. It's a grim conclusion that unfortunately undermines the movie's value. Kathryn is well-intentioned, but ultimately whistling into a strong wind.

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