In that pretzel twist of a thriller “Memento” there’s an irresistible scene in which the amnesiac hero played by Guy Pearce runs at breakneck speed.
First, the amnesiac wonders what he is doing and then he decides he’s chasing another man, only to realize – just before the other guy squeezes off a round in his direction – that he is being chased in turn. In the rather less twisty, if nicely kinked Belgian thriller “The Memory of a Killer,” the title character faces his own dangerous adversary, except that here the enemy hot on his heels is dementia.
The film, originally titled “The Alzheimer Case,” opens as two separate stories – one involving an idealistic young cop, the other an older hardbitten assassin – that clue by clue, break by break, eventually twist together. Directed by Erik Van Looy, the story takes place in 1995, in Antwerp, beginning with a showdown between the cop, Eric (Koen De Bouw), and a pimp selling his daughter for sex. Child prostitution is only one part of a puzzle that encompasses a range of good guys and bad, including the hit man, Angelo Ledda (Jan Decleir).
Soon after Ledda signs on for a job in Marseille, he travels to Belgium to fulfill his contract and extinguish two people stirring up trouble for a government power broker.
After Ledda completes the first half of his contract, he moves onto the second. Yet when he realizes who the next target is Ledda recoils and refuses to finish the job. Unsympathetic to his moral qualms, his employers respond as might be expected and turn their lethal sights on him. The hunter becomes the hunted. This creates headaches for Ledda, but none has the lethal, stubborn force of the disease wiping away his memory.
Next to Ledda, the rest of the cast, in particular De Bouw and Werner De Smedt, as his hot-headed colleague, Freddy, hold their own, but the cops are generally familiar, stock players.
*** | “The Memory of a Killer”
R for gun violence, an explosion, adult language and themes, and female nudity|2 hours|CRIME DRAMA|Directed by Erik Van Looy; written by Carl Joos and Van Looy; in Flemish and French with subtitles; based on the novel “The Alzheimer Case,” by Jef Geeraerts; photography by Danny Elsen; starring Koen De Bouw, Werner De Smedt|Opens today at the Chez Artiste