Knox Goes Away review: "Michael Keaton's hitman noir misses the mark"

Knox Goes Away has premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Here’s our review…

Michael Keaton fares better as star rather than director in Knox Goes Away, only his second feature as a director in an acting career that's spanned nearly 50 years. A vaguely promising premise is squandered in a convoluted neo-noir set-up.

Hitman John Knox (Keaton) finds that his cognitive faculties are failing him when he’s diagnosed with Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, which has similar degenerative effects to Alzheimer’s, only they come on at a faster rate. This leaves him with just a few weeks to get his affairs in order while he’s still capable of doing so, which means extricating himself from his (seemingly quite civilised) crime syndicate, and sharing his amassed assets with his estranged family.

This being a neo-noir, things don’t go smoothly - Knox’s last job goes awry, with two additional people killed as well as the target. And to make matters more complicated, Knox’s son (James Marsden) shows up, clothes soaked in blood, in a whole mess of trouble that his dad happens to be uniquely equipped to deal with.

You can see the appeal of the role for Keaton. Knox is taciturn, gruff, sardonic, even if Gregory Poirier’s script doesn’t ever really get under his skin or reckon with the fact that this guy we’re rooting for has spent his career killing people with zero qualms. That duality isn’t really tapped into, even though Keaton’s natural charisma makes him immensely watchable all the same.

Much of the supporting cast around him don’t match up, though. Suzy Nakamura makes the most of some fun lines as the detective investigating both of the seemingly unrelated incidents that Knox is mired in, but Marsden’s OTT turn is a distraction. Al Pacino gets some laughs as a former associate that Knox can rely on, but his presence - whether he’s eating takeout in the bath or relaxing in an animal-print robe - further detracts from the tension.

Odd editing choices nag, too. The film is broken into a tripartite weekly structure, which adds little. Scenes often fade out abruptly, which is perhaps intended to mimic the protagonist’s state of mind, but disrupts the film’s flow without making it any more immersive.

The biggest problem, though, is that the tasks Knox sets himself to complete while his mind can still manage it - dutifully ticking items off a list as he goes - is just not particularly interesting, nor does it redeem itself with a satisfying climax. 

Unfortunately, the memory of far superior neo-noir Memento casts a shadow: while not many thrillers can hold a candle to Christopher Nolan’s told-in-reverse, memory-troubled mystery, Knox Goes Away feels completely fumbled in comparison. It’s the kind of film you might catch late one night on TV while channel-hopping, before instantly forgetting about it.

Knox Goes Away's release date is currently TBC.