Battle of Memories is quite intriguing ... for the first 5 minutes. After that I'm afraid, it's all down hill. Constantly referencing a host of similar - themed, but better, earlier movies (Total Recall, Inception, Paycheck etc), it's major problem lies in its foundation plot line premise. In the future people can go to Memory Centres and undergo procedures to erase some of their memories ... subject to, we find out, a plethora of confusing, uninteresting qualifications, terms and conditions. Immediately the alert viewer is asking oneself who would bother then, if it's not a straight forward operation? Well apparently Jiang Feng would.
He's a popular author whose wife, Zhang Daichen has decided to divorce him, for reasons (surprise, surprise!) that are never made clear. So not unreasonably then I suppose, he decides to have his memories of her deleted, a course of action that we suspect may be compromised by a critical incident occurring, just before he leaves the Centre. To add to his misfortune, on arriving home, Daichen suddenly announces she wants to postpone the divorce (for reasons not explained until the last 10 minutes of the film, in a ho hum twist dramatically better utilised in soap operas such as Days of Our Lives). And things don't get much better despite the inclusion of serial - killers, odd ball cops and copious black and white memory flashbacks (and for good measure, endless variations of same).
Production standards are admittedly quite good, but overall tone of the film is just plain weird. It's not just the reams of clunky, awkward dialogue that characters are forced to spout (it can't all be blamed on poor sub - title translations.) But the tone of the film is constantly out of kilter. E. G. What's with episodes such as the Three Stooges like slapstick farce of the cops rolling down the stairs together, in a film supposed to be some sort of sci - fi thriller?
For those who manage to stay the course of this dull mess of a film, they'll find Battle of Memories collapsing into a morass of blindingly stupid coincidences and who cares plot twists. Character motivations change directions like the wind to better suit the convenience of the story. The climactic revelation of the killer's identity is obvious, with the only benefit being we now know this banal movie will thankfully soon end.
