Knox Goes Away (Michael Keaton, 2023)
Michael Keaton directs himself in the moody thriller-drama Knox Goes Away, about a professional killer suffering from dementia.
It’s Keaton’s second feature as a director, after The Merry Gentleman (2008), which I didn’t see, but in which he also played a professional hitman. I guess he is a genre aficionado, just like the rest (or at least some) of us.
This time around Keaton plays John Knox, who has been good at his job for a very long time. But things are about to take a turn for the worse. In the first 15 minutes John Knox botches a job, he is told by his doctor that he is suffering from a fast moving form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob’s disease and that he will lose his wits in a matter of weeks, not months. And, to complicate things even further, he is approached by his estranged son Miles (James Marsden) who desperately needs his help. Saving his son becomes John’s raison d'être, even though his methods seem pretty unconventional.
I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but it is pretty intriguing, and even though I’m not sure if the particular form of dementia that Knox is suffering from is accurately depicted, it does give him the necessary motivation to get his affairs in order, like pronto.
As an actor, Keaton is in fine form, and he has surrounded himself with a great supporting cast. Marsden is excellent as a man who wanted to do the right thing but couldn’t control his temper; the ever dependable Ray McKinnon briefly shines as John’s long-standing partner Muncie; Al Pacino seems almost inspired as a thief called Xavier Crane, who Knox decides to trust with his money; Marcia Gay Harden makes a lasting impression in the few scenes she has as John’s ex-wife, while Suzy Nakamura has some of the movie’s best lines as the lead detective on the botched job case, and Joanna Kulig plays a hooker who definitely has a heart, even if it’s not always made of gold.
As an acting treat Knox Goes Away works just fine, as a brooding character study (with some humor and bursts of violence) of a troubled mind on the way out, it is also sufficiently engrossing, even though the movie, written by Gregory Poirier, never explains why John Knox became a hitman in the first place.
Keaton directs with steady hand, and even though the movie’s limited budget occasionally shows, the movie casts a long dark shadow that fits well with its neo noir influences.
The world is full of hitman movies, and I enjoy quite a few of them, and watching Knox Goes Away I was at times reminded of The Alzheimer Affair (2003) by Erik van Looy, about an almost retired assassin with Alzheimer’s disease. The movies themselves are pretty different, but I guess a hitman with Creutzfeldt-Jakob is the next logical progression in this long line of genre movies.
Note: Knox Goes Away is out now in the United States and Sweden, and will be released in other parts of the world, like Brazil, Ukraine and The Netherlands, in the coming months.