In his second directorial effort, the underwhelming \u201cKnox Goes Away,\u201d Michael Keaton portrays a heady hitman diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of dementia. His illness is so grave, when he\u2019s finally diagnosed, he\u2019s told he only has a few weeks to get his affairs in order. It\u2019s a fascinating premise by screenwriter Gregory Poirier, one that is methodically and quietly built, but ultimately loses any grit, atmosphere, suspense, or emotion it could possibly carry because of a few narrative headscratchers. Even Keaton, usually a sure bet, doesn\u2019t land what the movie is selling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This film needed to be a complete character study. An intellectual with PhDs in English and History and a Gulf War veteran, Knox is already enough of an enigma to pull our interest. Though we get some idea of his everyday life\u2014he has a standing appointment every Thursday with a call girl (Joanna Kulig)\u2014it\u2019s minimal in comparison to what his background teases. Instead, the film diverts attention from Knox in lieu of a trite subplot: It\u2019s been years since Knox has seen his estranged son Miles (James Marsden), who suddenly comes to his front door bloody and battered, and panting. Miles has just killed the man who raped his daughter, and he needs his dad, who knows about these kind of things, to cover it up.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The subplot is an all-too obvious through line to retrace Knox\u2019s life as he faces mortality. But the movie doesn\u2019t even get that right. There are less scenes with Marsden and Keaton than you\u2019d expect, and less opportunities to discover the inner workings of his dad before they totally dissipate. Keaton spends much of the film enacting a convoluted plan of subterfuge that\u2019ll require the help of an old friend (a soporific Al Pacino) so he can remember it. Once again, that would be a great premise, if the twist weren\u2019t so obvious 45 minutes into the film. What remains is a cold character study uninterested in its primary character, sunken by an all too predictable script.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are surprisingly even more cracks to be discovered: Keaton directs even further attention from Knox by focusing on the two detectives working to catch him. Suzy Nakamura plays the smarter, more observant of the two, and is actually a welcomed sight in this subdued action flick, if only because she has an edge to her character. But we come out knowing more about her character\u2019s biography than Knox\u2019s, particularly the immigrant aspirations she had to deal with from her overwhelming parents and the casual workplace sexism she encounters. Normally, I\u2019m down for some elements of cultural specificity. Here, it\u2019s inorganic to the film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In his second directorial effort, the underwhelming \u201cKnox Goes Away,\u201d Michael Keaton portrays a heady hitman diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of dementia. His illness is so grave, when he\u2019s finally diagnosed, he\u2019s told he only has a few weeks to get his affairs in order. It\u2019s a fascinating premise by screenwriter Gregory …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[50,37],"class_list":["post-1203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thriller-movies","tag-crime","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}