Two years after the greatly respected veteran actor Liam Neeson played an aging hit man with early dementia in “Memory,” the greatly respected veteran actor Michael Keaton plays an aging hit man with a rapidly escalating form of dementia in the stylish and brooding noir “Knox Goes Away.”
This also marks Keaton’s second turn as a director, some 16 years after he helmed “The Merry Gentleman,” and Keaton played a professional hit man in THAT film as well, and we’ll leave it to Michael Keaton and/or licensed therapists to sort that out.
Like Pierce Brosnan’s character in 2023’s “Fast Charlie” (we’re in the Golden Age of the Aging Existential Hit Man genre), Keaton’s John Knox is a sophisticated and erudite gun for hire. In addition to the obligatory military background, he has two PhDs, once taught at Bucknell and regularly lends out books to the Polish sex worker (Joanna Kulig) who visits him every Thursday afternoon.
Early in the story, Knox learns he has Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a rapidly progressive neurodegenerative disorder, and he has only a few weeks before his clarity and his memory all but disappear. (When the doctor says, “I’m sorry,” Knox responds, “That’s OK. … Even if I hated you for telling me, I’d forget soon enough.”)
With Knox scribbling notes to himself while scrambling to stay focused on events a la Guy Pearce’s Leonard Shelby in “Memento,” L.A. Police Detective Emily Ikari (an excellent Suzy Nakamura) suspects Knox is the gunman behind a bizarre triple homicide — and the web gets even more tangled when Knox’s estranged son, Miles (James Marsden), becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a 32-year-old white supremacist and rapist who met Miles’ teenage daughter online and impregnated her.
I know. That’s a whopper of a development, and the timing makes for quite the convenient turn of the plot, as Knox seizes the opportunity to clear his son’s name and perhaps gain a measure of redemption and forgiveness along the way — if only he can pull off an intricate and complex framing job before he loses his clarity. (He’s already forgetting simple words, failing to recognize familiar faces and thinking events from years ago happened just days ago.)
“Knox Goes Away” doesn’t have the most elegant twists and turns, but the dialogue is sharp — and it helps greatly when the supporting cast includes the likes of Marcia Gay Harden as Knox’s ex-wife and Al Pacino as Knox’s mentor Xavier Crane, who has the classic On The Phone Role, i.e., nearly all of Xavier’s scenes consist of him on the phone with the main character. (At one point, Xavier is on the phone while drinking wine and eating Chinese takeout in the bathtub, and why not.)
Director Keaton illustrates Knox’s declining condition with some relatively subtle camera gimmicks, while the jazz-infused score is so spot-on it verges on parody but is nonetheless effective. The supporting work is stellar, but this is Keaton’s film to carry every step of the way, and he turns in a typically fine and layered performance as a man who might find relief in the loss of his memories, given all the dark acts he’s committed.
