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100Without question, the best crime movie of the year--and one of the best movies of any sort now playing.
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88Watch Jan Decleir's performance. He never goes for the easy effect, never pushes too hard, is a rock-solid occupant of his character.
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88The movie itself is as slick, fast and terrifyingly violent as a top-grade American crime thriller, but a lot smarter than most.
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88A cracking police procedural from Belgian director Erik van Looy, has a jaw-dropping premise so smartly executed that if this movie weren't in Flemish I'd swear that Michael Mann had directed it.
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80Wonderfully acted and energetically filmed, and in fact it partly echoes a real-life pedophilia scandal that rocked Belgian society to its foundations in the '90s.
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80This is one terrific thriller with several wicked tricks up its sleeve, each more satisfying than the last.
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80The title character in this nicely kinked Belgian thriller faces a unique adversary: the enemy hot on his heels is Alzheimer's.
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80A gratifyingly slick and fast-moving Flemish thriller, directed by Erik Van Looy, with superb acting.
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80A gripping,stylishly lensed thriller.
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This award-winning picture from Belgium is the kind Hollywood seems no longer interested in making: a sophisticated drama that presumes a level of insight and maturity in an audience that doesn't need winks and arrows to understand what's going on.
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80Belgian actor [Jan] Decleir's tough-guy vulnerability ... gives an otherwise standard police procedural extraordinary grace and power.
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80Director Erik Van Looy skillfully profiles both the assassin (Jan Decleir, suggesting a tougher, over-the-hill version of Michel Piccoli) and the Antwerp detectives investigating his crimes.
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78The movie is tightly wound and expertly unraveled, resulting in a thriller that you'll remember – unlike the hitman Ledda.
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75Absorbing, operatic.
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75Writer-director Erik Van Looy keeps the action moving briskly. Danny Elsen's cinematography is stylish and the acting top-notch.
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75This Belgian crime thriller makes compelling viewing out of a "you can't be serious" plotline.
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75Entertaining.
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75As exciting and involving as it is brainy.
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75With solid performances, competent direction and artfully drab cinematography, the film would be indistinguishable from a Hollywood thriller if not for the Flemish dialogue. It's no surprise to learn that an American remake is in the works.
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70Although comparisons to the memory-challenged machinations of "Memento" are inevitable, the plotting here takes a more traditionally linear path.
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70Van Looy has created a fast-paced and stylish thriller. Declair's Ledda, marvelously suave and vulnerable, provides most of the pathos.
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67A lot of thrillers have asked us to identify with assassins -- but I'd be hard-pressed to name one that makes a hitman as sympathetic, if not sentimental, as The Memory of a Killer.
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67Highly entertaining.
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63This is nothing that a good episode of NYPD Blue hasn't shown myriad times.
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60Both De Bouw and Decleir are superb.
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50Director Erik Van Looy has filmmaking chops to spare, and while he has created a sharply shot and crisply paced film, he isn't able to make it all cohere.
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50Initially, the film comes off as a poor man's "Memento," but it gradually becomes apparent that it's only really interested in its protagonist's Alzheimer's as a cheap plot point to be manipulated or discarded as the filmmakers see fit.
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50If you're one of those people who complained that "Memento" could just as well have been told in chronological order, The Memory of a Killer may be your cup of tea.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 6 out of 6
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tonyb.7
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johnp.9Another example of just how much better cinema is across the pond.
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KenG10