The Memory of a Killer

Ledda, an ageing contract killer, returns to Belgium for two jobs in Antwerp. When he learns the second target is a twelve-year-old girl he refuses the work and starts killing the men who hired him, one by one. His problem is Alzheimer's: he forgets names, writes notes on his palm, and some mornings does not know where he is, and as the police on his trail notice this the chase inverts. Erik Van Looy adapted Jef Geeraerts's novel. Jan Decleir plays the killer without begging for sympathy, as a man simply trying to finish a job. At the centre of the story is a child prostitution ring and the upper class protecting it. It broke the Belgian box office record of its day. Who it is for: viewers who like European crime films and thrillers built on ageing. Who it is not for: anyone avoiding the subject of child abuse.