Tom Cruise stands for physical action movies just like Liam Neeson is for action movies with a good dose of payback. At 70 years old, just completed this week, the actor shows no signs that he will stop singing lines of threat and intimidation. But this time, he’s on the other side of the force.
In “Killer Without a Trace,” Liam plays Alex Lewis, a hired assassin who is hired by criminals related to child sex trafficking in El Paso, Texas. He takes the job, but after knowing precisely what his targets are, he refuses to complete the task and sets out to kill whoever hired him before he is caught himself.
However, Alex has Alzheimer’s disease that progresses by the day, causing him to forget some important actions and names as well. At the same time, the FBI is on the trail of the killer who, contrary to the film’s title, leaves a trail of deaths wherever he goes, in search of justice.
The main federal agent in the story is Vincent Serra, played by Guy Pearce – actor who already has experience with “dismemories”. Pearce starred in the 2000 film “Amnesia”, where he plays a man with memory loss, who ends up getting several tattoos all over his body to remember what he had just investigated about his wife’s murder.
Liam Neeson doesn’t tattoo himself, but writes key information on his arms, which are conveniently erased as the film progresses.
The character’s memory loss could easily not exist, even. It is a resource with great potential that is not explored as it should, resulting in a somewhat caricatured performance by Liam Nesson and being just a pompous adornment to the story that, in itself, already holds the viewer.
This story is based on another movie: “De Zaak Alzheimer”, from 2003 and inspired by the book by the Belgian Jef Geeraerts. Behold, Martin Campbell, director of “007: Casino Royale” became interested in the script and adapted it to become the American remake of the time.
“Assassin Without a Trace” has good action scenes, fights made by Liam Neeson himself, and performances that convince. In addition to Neeson and Pearce, we have Monica Bellucci playing a very Italian organized crime boss and one of the most powerful lawyers in the country.
The end of the film, however, is a bit forced and Alex Lewis’ motivation to seek justice doesn’t seem strong enough, but that half-closed look from Liam Neeson convinces. A look that made him so famous in his fifties.
Prior to this career change, the actor had played a wide range of characters.
Over the course of his career, Liam Neeson has played a Jedi master, one of Batman’s mentors, a kind-hearted German, and lent his voice to an adorable children’s animated film called “Ponyo,” from 2008, the same year he sang the iconic phrase “I will find you and I will kill you”, from the movie “Busca Implacável”.
The baggage is large and seems to be recognized in some dialogues in the actor’s new film. The first of them, right at the beginning of the feature, when Alex Lewis demonstrates to a colleague his desire to retire from the life of a murderer. The colleague just comments “men like us don’t retire”.
In real life, in an interview with NBC, the actor said that the audience is not stupid and will start to question, sooner or later, how a man in his 70s is making a movie with so much action.
According to Neeson, at some point, he should stop making films of this genre. While that doesn’t happen, there is a consensus: he still has the tricks.
Source: CNN Brasil
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