The Memory of a Killer

This is a taut and well-paced thriller about a contract killer whose incipient Alzheimer’s gives him a strange freedom to do the right thing. Of course, as a contract killer, he thinks the right thing involves brutally topping anyone who he deems to be morally wanting. Meanwhile, a police officer seeks both to arrest the killer’s targets and to stop him from killing again. It goes on a little too long, but Koen De Bouw and Jan Decleir are particularly good as the cop and killer, and Werner De Smedt does a bang-up job as the cop’s trigger-happy partner. While this is not a great work of art, it is an excellent action movie, and I’d be surprised if there isn’t a sanitized American remake already in the works.