![]() ![]() It follows a rich European fictional tradition, which in addition to the authors I've mentioned also includes Michael Dibdin, Henning Mankell, and Mai Sjowall and Per Wahloo. "The Memory of a Killer" is in the second category. There are crime stories, and then there are stories about people involved in crime. His first challenge is to figure out who Ledda really is the old man may be declining, but he is experienced and canny, and uses a masterstroke to throw the police off his scent. Along the way, he comes to realize that Angelo Ledda is on both sides of the moral equation: as a murderer to begin with, and then as a man working against the same perverts the police are after. Koen De Bouw plays Eric Vincke, the 40ish cop assigned to the original child prostitution case he follows the thread as it leads to powerful people and stays on the case in defiance of his superiors. MEMORIES OF A MURDERER MOVIEThe movie is based on the novel The Alzheimer Case by the Belgian writer Jef Geeraerts, which unthreads a plot involving buried perversion and aristocratic hauteur, contrasting it with the declining years of this hard-working professional man, the contract killer. The police/criminal side of the plot could be from a novel by Ed McBain or Nicholas Freeling the psychological side could be from Georges Simenon. In her review of this movie, Manohla Dargis has a lovely observation: "Here is a thriller that asks, Are men essentially good or do they just sometimes forget to be bad?" Angelo is forgetting to be anything. Angelo is a killer but he is also a man unwilling to cross a certain line. ![]() "No one will," he tells the man who wants him to do the job. The first man Angelo kills is a prosecutor who will not drop the investigation. MEMORIES OF A MURDERER SERIESBut "The Memory of a Killer" is not another version of "Memento" it is a full-bore traditional policier, beginning with a plainclothes cop busting a man who is selling his 11-year-old daughter, and continuing with a series of killings as powerful men try to conceal their connection to child prostitution. Like the hero of " Memento," he writes notes to himself on his arm. He is a contract killer who knows he is losing his mind. "I know how it begins," Angelo says firmly. An orderly describes the onset of his brother's symptoms. ![]() In Belgium, he visits his senile older brother in an institution. Here is the first hint: He is in the early stages of Alzheimer's. Angelo tells the waitress to bring fries with his steak, and she reminds him that he has already ordered them. "Men like us never retire," his boss says. He protests that he is too old - he's retired. He is assigned to go to Antwerp in Belgium and kill a man.
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