La mémoire du tueur

I was surprised to read several negative comments on this site about "De Zaak Alzheimer". Some people seem to think that the movie wasn't worth the hype, but I disagree with this. I think this is the best Belgian cop thriller ever made. The story (based on the novel of Jef Geeraerts) is brilliantly written and the cast is outstanding. Our best Belgian actors give top performances. Jan Decleir, Koen De Bouw, Werner De Smedt and Jo De Meyere are wonderful.

When I would see an American movie who is similar to "De Zaak Alzheimer", I'd probably give it 8/10. What so special about "De Zaak Alzheimer"? It is a Belgian production, made with a limited budget and a cast and crew who doesn't have that much experience in making cop thrillers in an American style. So I'm convinced the movie is really worth the hype. Also that fact that the movie was nominated and won several awards in other countries, proves Erik Van Looy really made a good impression with his movie. I also heard they're negotiating for an American adaptation of the book, what also proves the value of the movie and the book.

A sequel? No, not a sequel but an adaptation of another book of Jef Geeraerts would be suitable. Erik Van Looy is also planning on doing this, but I read it is possible we will have to wait several years for this adaptation because the expectations will be high and Van Looy of course doesn't want to disappoint the audience.

To conclude my comment I can only repeat the fact that "De Zaak Alzheimer" is a great movie and I can't hardly wait to see the American adaptation (they talked about Morgan Freeman for one of the leading roles) and the next adaptation of a Jef Geeraerts-novel by Erik Van Looy.

9/10

I saw this film at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival. Although based on a novel, this stylish police thriller's main conceit ("hit-man has Alzheimer's") could have been lifted from a Hollywood film executive's idea of "high concept". Except that it would have made a forgettable Hollywood picture. Instead, director Van Looy sets this story in his native Belgium. Police detectives Vincke and Verstuyft are like a modern day Starsky and Hutch, without the bad haircuts. Who knew that Antwerp even had police, never mind such cool ones? Their job is to track down the man who's killed several high-profile politicians and a young child prostitute.

Reminding me a lot of Terence Stamp in The Limey, veteran actor Jan Decleir portrays aging hitman Angelo Ledda, whose refusal to kill the young girl leads him to seek revenge on the people who want her dead. His deterioration is a cause for sympathy as well as a plot device. He must complete his "mission" before he forgets his reasons for carrying it out. He also plays a cat and mouse game with the police who are trying to solve the killings, staying one step ahead until he can no longer think clearly.

Van Looy admitted his fondness for "police thrillers with a soul" and especially for the work of Michael Mann, and the influence of Mann is everywhere. If you like Mann, you'll like this film. Well-developed characters, moody cinematography and fine acting didn't completely save this film, though. I thought the plot was a little too straightforward, and the film itself was about 20 minutes too long, with a couple of false endings that could have been re-cut. I think I would have given a shorter version of this film an 8, but even if it was a slightly derivative cop film, it was a slightly derivative cop film IN FLEMISH, which has to count for something!

(7/10)

Having just watched Liam Neeson as the assassin with Alzheimer's and a conscince, I took a shot at the film upon it was based. The orignal is similar as far as the basic story goes but has a few differences, including a vastly different ending.

Jan Declair is excellent as the killer although Liam has more of a screen presence in the American movie.

The hitman is hired to off a series of bad men involved in a prostitution ring. Some of those involved are at the highest levels of society and corruption is rampant within the legal system.

The killer makes a decision not to kill a twelve year-old girl he has ben paid to hit.

The action is almost constant and I recommend both films.

"The Memory of a Killer (De Zaak Alzheimer)" is a sophisticated synthesis of several genres into a stylish thriller. There's the opening shots of a steam engine, saluting European film noir contrasting with the sharp sunlight of corrupt Marseille; the Georges Simenon-like police investigation contemporized with gritty Brit mystery crimes and the hunky bantering buddy cops where one is a wild rule-breaker and his boss is an Eliot Ness straight arrow; the samurai code of honor; the Western where the old gunslinger takes on one last conflict, like "The Unforgiven" and already adapted to "Man on the Train (L'Homme du Train)"; a revenge showdown, like the recent "Four Brothers"; the memory stream of consciousness tricks of "Memento" and the snappy editing of Hong Kong crime thrillers like "Infernal Affairs (Wu jian dao)." And we even get a "The Sopranos"-like psychological profile of a hit man.

While director Erik Van Looy smoothly integrates all these elements together in adapting what must have been a complex novel, this is terrific, intelligent popular entertainment and only its subtitles keep it in limited release in the U.S. in art houses. Too bad a Hollywood adaptation is inevitable.

The film has an exciting dual structure of following the cops and the criminal as they get intertwined and chase each other, as each sorts out vengeance and some justice (with surprising collateral damage) ever higher up the responsibility ladder so that our sympathies, and theirs, are compromised. While we atypically don't see anything of the cops' personal lives (except with an amusing visual twist that it's the guy in the shower), we do get thrust into their quite believable bureaucratic and legal wranglings, which, while a bit confusing for an American audience, can be inferred to be similar to the jurisdictional conflicts between local police departments and the FBI that we've seen in plenty of movies and TV shows. The English subtitles seem pretty good at communicating the localisms, though some of the cultural conflict in Belgium between French and Flemish speakers is lost, particularly when it is significant which language is being spoken.

The twist that is given away in the original title of the film, translated as "The Alzheimer Affair," is that the highly intelligent and perceptive criminal, the charismatic Jan Decleir, realizes he is losing his memory, and sees his near future clearly in his hospitalized brother. We get inside his head as he is trying to out race not only the cops, his traitorous client and duplicitous boss, but himself, so that his taunt of "too slow" takes on a double meaning. His professionalism takes over even when the flashy cinematography indicates he doesn't quite remember what he's done.

While the body count is high, the violence is one on one and is not gratuitous. Each death ratchets up the tensions and complications as what at first seems street level crime has cynical political implications. Much of the film takes place in the dark, like "Collateral," and while there's a fair amount of sudden coming up from behind scares, that's usually the start of a suspenseful scene where cat and mouse decisions ricochet off in surprising ways.

The music very effectively supports the action, particularly when the story continues in an unexpected direction, though the choice of a Starsailor song over the credits didn't seem to fit.

It's a bit perplexing that "The Beat That My Heart Skipped (De Battre mon coeur s'est arrete)" is getting wider distribution (probably because it's a remake of an American film and has a young hunk at the center), when this is the better European crime thriller of the summer.

I don't know what the problem is with Belgium. For some reason or another almost no-one seems to make movies over here. If you compare it to Spain or France (just to name two other European countries) the number of movies made over here really is awfully low. The directors always complain that they don't have the money to make big productions, that the country is too small for real success... Nonsense, a good movie doesn't have to cost all that much and can still have a lot of success as De Zaak Alzheimer (or the Alzheimer Case for the people who don't speak Dutch) proved.

The movie is based on a novel written by Jef Geeraerts, one of Belgium's best writers when it comes to crime novels. Having read several of his books, I can assure you that the man is a good observer who really knows what he's talking about. For instance the hatred and envy between the different police forces isn't just made up by the writer. Every Belgian can assure you that it is really a big problem sometimes.

The story is about a professional hit-man who suffers from Alzheimer's disease. He isn't able to remember any details, so he writes everything down on his arm. When he's hired to kill a 12 year old girl who was the victim of pedophiles, he doesn't do his job, but goes after the bad guys.

If a Spanish or French director made this movie, this would have been a huge success all over the world. Now the movie went by rather unnoticed. OK, here it was a huge success, but I'm sure that most people in other countries haven't heard of it before. Still this may well be called one of the best movies in Belgian history. It's true that it has a big American feeling, but that didn't bother me once and I heard that Hollywood is planning a remake of this movie, so Van Looy must have done something right. I give it an 8,5/10.