INSTANTLY FORGETTABLE (MEMORY)

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Liam Neeson.. another action thriller.. beating up men half his age.. blah blah blah..

That's how I feel every time I review most movies these days starring the Northern Ireland actor.

I've grown weary of bemoaning the way he trots out easy to assemble, dull action thrillers.

I also suspect most of you are bored of reading or listening to critics who regularly lament his determination to be the 21st Century answer to Charles Bronson.

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I am in no doubt too you are fed up reading how an actor of his talent could do a whole lot more with the right project.

So here we are again - watching another Neeson movie where he gets to beat up a load of younger bad guys and blow up some old ones too.

Every time, though, that Neeson puts another twist on the action formula, it ends up being one dimensional and dull.

His new picture is 'Memory' and, well, the clue's in the title of this Martin Campbell directed thriller.

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Neeson is a hired assassin, Alex Lewis who works for some very nasty people in Mexico.

When he first see him, he garrotes a target who is visiting his mum in hospital.

Catching up with his old chum Lee Boardman's Mauricio after doing this piece of dirty work, he tells his colleague... yawn.. that he's looking to get out of the business.

Oddly, Alex also asks for an ice tea just after receiving one.

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This is one of the first indications in the film that he has early onstage Alzheimer's which we learn his brother in Texas has too.

Mauricio doesn't grasp this and thinks Alex is drunk.

Our anti-hero.. sigh.. agrees to take on one more job, heading to El Paso where Josh Taylor's rather unfortunately named Randy Sealman is waiting for him.

Randy wants him to carry out a contract killing on Scot Williams' Elis Van Camp and steal a flash drive from a safe in the victim's house.

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Alex obliges.

The flash drive, though, contains images of Randy sexually abusing Mia Sanchez's 13 year old Beatriz who has been pimped by her sleazy father, Antonio Jaramillo's Papa Leon.

Papa Leon has been the target of an undercover FBI investigation headed by Guy Pearce's Special Agent Vincent Serra and Taj Atwal's Linda Amsted in conjunction with Mexican police detective Harold Torres' Hugo Marquez.

Posing as a client, Serra's undercover identity is blown after Papa Leon tries to pimp Beatriz to him.

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Papa Leon puts a gun to his daughter's head but the situation is resolved when Serra charges at him and crashes through a window.

However the criminal dies during the fall.

Alex, meanwhile, is appalled when Randy tasks him with bumping off Beatriz.

He beats him up in a public toilet, warning him he will not kill kids and refuses to hand over the flash drive he unless the contract on the girl is called off.

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This puts him on a collision course with Randy, his mother Monica Bellucci's Davana Sealman and Mauricio.

It also puts him on the radar of Serra, Amisted, Marquez, Ray Stevenson's cop Danny Mora and Ray Fearon's Gerard Nussbaum.

Bodies litter the streets of El Paso as Alex comes after his old criminal associates who also come after him.

But can he or Serra bring down the Sealmans?

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With 'Edge of Darkness,' 'Goldeneye' and 'Casino Royale' in his locker, Campbell should know everything about crafting a taut action thriller.

However the Kiwi director has, like Neeson, become a bit of a hack when it comes to churning out action films.

After directing Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig in 007 adventures, he gave us the rather underwhelming 'Green Lantern' movie with Ryan Reynolds and the frankly bonkers Jackie Chan versus Irish republicans thriller 'The Foreigner'.

And even though he has assembled a decent cast for this Dario Scardapane scripted movie, he can't coax decent performances out of them.

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A lot of this is down to Scardapane's lifeless screenplay which treats its anti-hero's Alzheimer's with all the empathy of a Trump.

There have been loads of movies recently that have tried to understand the condition like Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland's 'Still Alice' and Florian Zeller's 'The Father'.

However this treats the condition as a convenient narrative device but with not even a half hearted attempt to understand what it might be like for Alex.

Based on Erik van Looy's well received 2003 Belgian action film 'The Alzheimer's Case,' it's typical of a script that skims the surface of a lot of issues just for the sake of narrative convenience.

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The horrors of paedophilia are alluded to in an 'isnt it awful' way but not really explored.

The women in the movie are either disposable femme fatales, potential sexual conquests or well meaning law enforcement buddies.

Serra's keen sense of justice is rather predictably driven by personal loss - the nature of which you could probably predict within five minutes of seeing him onscreen.

Pearce tries to breathe life into an otherwise stock character.

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Atwal and Torres dutifully trot out the role of dutiful colleagues.

Fearon looks bored as he growls his way through the role of Nussbaum.

Bellucci seems like she might have been given her role because Salma Hayek turned it down and delivers her lines with all the depth of a paper plate.

Taylor, Jaramillo and Williams look like they could have walked out of a tired Michael Winner action thriller.

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And while Stevenson and Boardman get to flex their older man muscles, Neeson just does what he always does - sleepwalking through a role that sees him scowling and growling in a trans-Atlantic accent during fist fights and gunfights.

Another action thriller 'Retribution' with Matthew Modine and Embeth Davidtz beckons and will no doubt, like this, end up on Amazon Prime or some other streaming service.

And then there's his Irish action thriller 'In the Land of Saints and Sinners' with Ciaran Hinds, Kerry Condon, Colm Meaney and Jack Gleeson which was shot recently in Co Donegal. 

If you are looking for a glimmer of hope, maybe we'll see Neeson's acting chops again in Neil Jordan's neo-noir thriller 'Marlowe' with Jessica Lange, Diane Kruger, Colm Meaney, Danny Huston, Ian Hart and Alan Cumming.

Until then, we will just have to shake our heads at the latest in a long line of substandard thrillers featuring the Ballymena actor and hope he will eventually see sense and stop trotting out this instantly forgettable nonsense.

('Memory' was released in cinemas in North America on April 29, 2022 and on Amazon Prime in the UK and Ireland on August 19, 2022)