THE MEMORY OF A KILLER (2003) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Erik Van Looy
Jan Decleir, Koen De Buow, Werner De Smedt,
Jo De Meyere, Deborah Ostrega, Patrick Descamps
An aging hit man in the early stages of Alzheimer's travels to Antwerp from Marseilles to do a job. When he learns that one of his targets is a 12-year-old girl, he refuses to carry out the assignment and instead starts tracking down his employers, working his way up the food chain and leaving behind a trail of corpses while playing cat-and-mouse with the cops. A good, tight, well-played thriller with an indelible lead performance by Jan Decleir as a man with no future and therefore nothing to lose, a brutally efficient thug-turned-death's angel, desperately clinging to what remains of his memory as he blasts his way into the twilight. Like Johnny Hallyday's bank robber in "Man On the Train", this is a guy you wouldn't necessarily want to meet up with, ever. But you don't want to see the lights go out on him, either, at least not till his last, bloody mission is accomplished.
