Knox Knox, Who’s There?

TIFF

Knox Goes Away
***
Rating: R
Run Time: 1 hour 54 minutes
Stars: Michael Keaton, Al Pacino, James Marsden, Marcia Gay Harden
Writer: Gregory Poirier
Director: Michael Keaton

Reviewed at the Toronto International Film Festival

Remember a few a few years ago when Liam Neeson made Memory, a movie about a hitman with dementia? Perhaps not. It was, and I absolutely hate to say this, forgettable. 

While Liam’s condition in that film pretty much just popped up at convenient moments to push the plot along, Michael Keaton’s noir thriller Knox Goes Away is a lot more successful when it comes to knitting the antihero’s similar medical condition and grisly profession into a cohesive narrative fabric.

Knox is good at what he does; so good, in fact, that even as his mind begins to slip away his muscle memory enables him to function admirably, at least as admirably as you could expect from a cold-blooded killer for hire.

Finally diagnosed with a rapid-acting form of terminal dementia, Knox plans to retire quietly and live out his final months in peace. But a fatal on-the-job slip-up and a devastating family crisis throw his plans askew.  

Battling the gathering fog, Knox hatches a complex plan to resolve both those matters: A scheme that, ironically, grows more complex as his mental facilities dwindle. For help, he turns to the only person he has a chance of trusting: A local mob boss (Al Pacino) who, Knox well knows, could just as easily rub him out prematurely as deliver on his promise of assistance.   

I’ve always preferred the funny Michael Keaton; the one who bedeviled Henry Winkler in Ron Howard’s Night Shift; the one who chewed the scenery so hilariously in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice. But he is, without debate, a first-rate dramatic actor, and here he pulls off some mighty fine acting Jiu Jitsu: drawing us into the fading mind of a morally reprehensible guy and sniffing out the spark of humanity that will make him, against all odds, a sympathetic character.

Ingeniously, Gregory Poirier’s script manages to cast Knox’s grim diagnosis as both the guy’s curse and method of deliverance. Directing himself, Keaton shows sure-handedness as he perfectly modulates his performance, ushering all the other characters into orderly orbits around him.