Knox Goes Away, 2024.
Directed by Michael Keaton.
Starring Michael Keaton, James Marsden, Suzy Nakamura, Joanna Kulig, Ray McKinnon, John Hoogenakker, Lela Loren, Marcia Gay Harden, Al Pacino, Dennis Dugan, Chad Donella, Jay Paulson, Marisa Echeverria, Paul Perri, Charles Bisset, Edwin Garcia II, Natasha Galano, and Morgan Bastin.
SYNOPSIS:
When a contract killer has a rapidly evolving form of dementia, he is offered an opportunity to redeem himself by saving the life of the adult son with whom he had been estranged.
The two major narrative threads of the legendary Michael Keaton’s sophomore directorial effort, Knox Goes Away, involve a contract killer’s rapidly increasing dementia (the filmmaker also stars in that leading role) and a murder cover-up to clear his estranged son Henry’s (James Marsden) connection to flying into uncontrolled rage when confronting the man having a sexual relationship and impregnating his 16-year-old daughter Kaylee (Morgan Bastin), relentlessly stabbing him to death.
Aside from the rather flat storytelling, there are also two grave frustrations here: this is one of those films where dementia seems to come into play at times of convenience to create artificial drama for the narrative, and there is a shocking, offputting disinterest in exploring anything about Kaylee in regards to the trauma of the grooming and subsequent abortion she is about to get or her perspective as a person on any of this. It’s a film that uses a young girl’s exploitation and suffering as a means to explore daddy issues and crime between two men, disregarding her entirely.
Even if the central focus is understandably on John Knox, an assassin of evildoers (drug runners, human traffickers, you name it) working for Al Pacino’s Xavier Crane, putting together a plan to collect his earnings, divide it, and give it away to the remaining important persons in his life (an ex-partner, his son, and some other names I won’t spoil) before fleeing the country to relax and waste away until his mind fully goes presumably, there is an obligation for the screenplay (written by Gregory Poirier) to give other sensitive subjects the delicacy they deserve instead of outright ignoring them.
Nevertheless, John has to fight his failing mind to remember where paintings and diamonds are hidden for selling, play it cool around his weekly afternoon escort date Annie (Joanna Kulig), whom he has been seeing for years now, and orchestrate a series of diversions to throw the police off of not only the previously mentioned murder but his own disastrous fuck up at the beginning of the film which is the inciting incident pushing him away from this life. This also makes for numerous, tediously pointless scenes of homicide investigators attempting to piece together crimes that we know the answer to, that are supposedly intended to be compelling on the basis that we don’t know what breadcrumbs John Knox is intentionally giving them or what is a result of more mistakes.
Realistically, there is never much in doubt as to how this will end, although there are one or two instances of crafty trickery during the finale, something that the overall experience could have used more of since the majority of what is here is rather dull. Michael Keaton’s performance is by far the best part of Knox Goes Away, successfully making the character feel like a real person even when the narrative continuously spirals into a mess of unbelievable forced character behavior, unnecessary twists, and betrayals. He is such an outstanding actor; his work (and the rest of the ensemble) is solid enough to keep one mildly invested, but a wiser decision would be to go away from the film.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
