Note: The following article contains discussion of child abuse.
Liam Neeson's legacy of revenge-fuelled action movies continues with Memory, which is now available to watch on Netflix UK.
Directed by Casino Royale's Martin Campbell, it's a twisty story where a contract killer becomes the hero looking for justice against all odds.
Alex (Neeson) is an experienced assassin suffering from early stages of Alzheimer's, which is starting to make his memory misty and unreliable. He still accepts a job from a dangerous criminal organisation, though ends up refusing to see it through as it involves murdering a 13-year-old girl named Beatriz (Mia Sanchez).
When later he discovers the girl has been killed by another hit man, Alex embarks on a dangerous mission to seek justice for Beatriz, threatening to expose a wide net of sex trafficking and corruption in El Paso.
With a target on his back and FBI agent Vincent Serra (Guy Pearce) breathing down his neck, Alex tries to find all the evidence needed to bring the crime syndicate and his client Davana Sealman (Monica Bellucci), down. His loss of memory affects his every move, but he won't stop until he finds justice.
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Major spoilers follow.
Memory ending explained
Before Beatriz's murder, Alex's first target was wealthy contractor Ellis Van Camp (Scot Williams), who he killed in order to retrieve a flash drive from his home safe. Once he refuses to continue with the contract and Beatriz is killed, Alex accesses the flash drives and discovers why he was really hired.
Van Camp was trying to blackmail Davana Sealman, so she hired Alex to take him out. She was actually trying to protect her son, Randy (Josh Taylor), who is seen on a video sexually abusing Beatriz. She was not the first young undocumented girl Randy had taken advantage of, and his mother was trying to cover it for him.
Knowing this, Alex is not only seeking revenge for Beatriz, but he's also set on stopping these abuses from happening.
This is not only due to a sudden change of heart about his profession, but also, as we'll find out later, because Alex and his brother also suffered from sexual abuse by their own father when they were kids. This is his way of finding retribution, and preventing other children from going through the same.
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Meanwhile, agent Vincent Serra is trying to convince his FBI supervisor Gerald Nussbaum (Ray Fearon) that all these murders are connected to the human-trafficking case he's been investigating with agent Linda Amisted (Taj Atwal). They are also working with a Mexican detective, Hugo Marquez (Harold Torres), as a consultant.
After killing Davana's middleman William Borden (Daniel De Bourg) and Beatriz's killer, Alex decides it's time to team up with Agent Serra.
He calls him, confessing to the murders of Borden and Van Camp and revealing there is a group of powerful men in the city getting away with hurting children. Serra starts putting all the pieces together — every death is connected to the ICE detention centre where Beatriz was detained a year ago. Van Camp was the contractor and Randy is the owner.
Serra deduces that Randy is Alex's next target, but he is too late to stop him. Alex kills Davana's son during a party in his yacht. Serra lets him get away.
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Hurt from the last hit, Alex hides in his family's closed bakery. Thanks to Linda Amisted's investigations, we get to know more about his origins — it's implied that he killed his abusive dad, faked his death and moved to Mexico.
After a failed attempt to kill Davana, Alex is taken into custody and beaten up, which leads to him being taken to the hospital. There, he tells Serra he has evidence of Davana's criminal activity in a flash drive, but he can't remember where he put it. His Alzheimer's is progressing rapidly.
In the meantime, Davana threatens her doctor Dr Meyers (Atanas Srebrev) into killing Alex before he gets the chance to spill her secrets. However, Alex subdues him and takes him hostage in order to leave the hospital and request one last conversation with agent Serra.
Luckily, Alex manages to remember something important. "Maybe they will kill you just to bury this," he tells Serra, but as he says the word "bury", a memory comes to him. "Bery, spelled B-E-R-Y.," he says. Seconds later, he is killed by the police.
After Alex's death, the FBI considers the case closed, despite Serra's complaints. However, he will still find one last piece of evidence that could build the case against Davana Sealman.
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In a photo from the investigation, Serra notices that the sign on the outside of Alex's abandoned bakery is broken and only spells B-E-R-Y. He now understands what Alex was trying to tell him in the car before he died.
Serra retrieves the flash drive with the phone conversation between Davana Sealman and Ellis Van Camp and takes it to El Paso's district attorney. Without Alex's testimony, however, the evidence is not enough to build a case against her. Or maybe, as Alex told him, she has everyone in her pocket and the system is corrupted.
Justice will be served, though, one way or another. In the ending of Memory, agent Amisted takes Serra out to celebrate his suspension, while a masked detective Marquez murder Davana Sealman by slitting her throat.
As the news of her murder is announced in the news, Serra realises his partner just gave him a solid alibi to prove his innocence in case someone should accuse him — he was in a public place with dozens of witnesses and he paid for the drinks using his credit card.
As Serra confronts her about it, Amisted recites the prayer for Saint Ines, the one detective Marquez taught her earlier in the movie. They both conspired to offer justice when the system failed to provide it.
Memory is now available to watch on Netflix UK.
Readers who are affected by the issues raised in this story are encouraged to contact the NSPCC on 0808 800 5000 (www.nspcc.org.uk). Readers in the US are encouraged to contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline on (1-800-422-4453) or the American SPCC (www.americanspcc.org).
Mireia (she/her) has been working as a movie and TV journalist for over eight years. Based in the UK, she is a former deputy movies editor at Digital Spy, and previously worked for the Spanish magazine Fotogramas. Mireia's work has been published in other outlets such as Esquire and Elle in Spain, and WeLoveCinema and GamesRadar+ in the UK. She is also a published author, having written the essay Biblioteca Studio Ghibli: Nicky, la aprendiz de bruja about Hayao Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service.
During her years as a freelance journalist and film critic, Mireia has covered festivals around the world and has interviewed high-profile talents such as Kristen Stewart, Ryan Gosling, Jake Gyllenhaal and many more. She's also taken part in juries such as the FIPRESCI jury at Venice Film Festival and the short film jury at Kingston International Film Festival in London. LinkedIn
