'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
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