The Memory of a Killer (2005)

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Being Dutch I was very grateful having seen this movie with Dutch subtitles, as I find it very hard to follow Flemish. And I would have hated to watch the movie dubbed with voices speaking standardized Dutch. That is one of the most ridiculous things I can think of! In my opinion De Zaak Alzheimer (I also have read the excellent book) surpasses every single other Belgian or Dutch movie, with the possible exceptions of Paul Verhoeven's excellent De Vierde Man and Bert Haanstra's Fanfare. Superb storytelling, great acting, especially by the seasoned Jan Decleir. This one is a treat for those who love policestories but do not need fastspeed action scenes. Like the famous French policiers De Zaak Alzheimer has a far more realistic feel than the average Hollywood police movie. The opening scene of De Zaak Alzheimer is one of the most disgusting I have ever seen. And no, no gore involved.

This movie runs like a bad Tony Scott movie. Sorry for the redundancy, but when I first heard about Memory of a Killer, I was expecting something riveting and genius. Instead I get a movie about two stereotypical detectives, both far too brash for their own good, which of course pays off in the end. The movie relies heavily on visual and audio effects for a lackluster dramatic payoff. When the killer experiences his Alzheimer's symptoms, the viewer get a fistful of green-tinted frames of him looking slightly disoriented. These little snippets do nothing to add to his condition when simple acting skill could've enhanced the emotional impact. Instead, I feel no emotions toward him or any of the other characters. The dialog has a few witty moments, and I'm being generous when I say "a few." A combination of bad writing and bad directing make this inherent mystery impossible to follow and far from compelling. If I wanted a good mystery, I probably should've watched an episode of Scooby Doo.

In Hollywood history you find great cop classics like Maltese Falcon and Dirty Harry. Hollywood substituted substance with CGI years ago, and we've been stuck with poorly written, bloody, explosion strewn messes ever since. Myself, being a fan of the 1940 type of film with true acting and writing, finds today's Hollywood efforts sadly lacking.I have turned to euro films to find true acting and well written stories. In Memory of a Killer, there is a modern day classic, a must have for fans of the Bogart type movies with feel and substance.The movie opens with something that makes most of us sick to our stomach-a father selling his twelve year old daughter for sexual purposes. The Police bust in (Thank God) and set forth a chain of events that take us deep into the heart of darkness of man complicated by bureaucratic bumbling. The buddy cops can be a cliché in most films, but the buddy cops in this movie never sink into the stupidness found in the cop film genre.The Angelo Ledda character (the assassin) is John Wayne type in his take no prisoners approach in his crusade to wipe out a protected group who have been preying on children. We almost cheer as he kills each one in cold blood.A truly excellent film not only worth the price of rental, but also of owning.

'De Zaak Alzheimer' or 'The Alzheimer Case' or the US titled 'The Memory of a Killer' is a stunningly well written, directed, acted, and photographed film from Belgium. Though termed by director Erik Van Looy as a 'police thriller', this gripping drama is so much more: this is the story of organized crime, of the men and women who fight crime, and of a man afflicted with progressive Alzheimer's Disease which alters his entire view of his life of crime. It is a police thriller with a soul and as such is one of the finest films of this genre this viewer has ever seen.Angelo Ledda (the enormously gifted Jan Decleir) is a hit man sent to Antwerp to eliminate some important 'clients'. He is hesitant to take on the job as he understands that his mind is being slowly altered by the effects of Alzheimer's disease. But go he must and after his first successful 'kill', he is ordered to kill a young girl, an order he cannot follow, and an order, which with his failing memory and abilities acknowledged, he decides to turn on his employers and rid the world of those big crime magnates. The Flemish police, lead by two superb minds - Vincke (Koen De Bouw) and Verstuyft (Werner De Smedt) - follow the path of corpses that lay in Ledda's wake of destroying the important heads of crime in Antwerp. Ledda becomes strangely connected and committed to the two police, in reality helping them by remote stance do their job, but the movie is a cat and mouse chase between the police and Ledda and one whose ending, though somewhat predictable, manages to tear at the heart of the audience as the unwinding of Ledda's mind by Alzheimer's disease results in a metamorphosis of a killer's mentality to that of a quasi-hero.Brilliantly photographed by Danny Elsen and accompanied by an electrifying musical score by Stephen Warbeck THE MEMORY OF A KILLER is a taut, tense, unnerving, and fascinating tale told to perfection by Carl Joos' screenplay based on Jef Geeraerts' novel. There isn't a weak link here - every actor is superb and the performance by Jan Decleir is the stuff of which legends are made. Recommended without reservation. In Dutch and French and Flemish with English subtitles. Grady Harp