Atom Egoyan’s Remember (2015) is a film that dares to ask: What if a Holocaust survivor went on a cross-country murder spree with a handwritten letter and zero short-term memory? It’s part revenge thriller, part nursing home drama, and all parts confused. The premise is ridiculous. The tone is glacial. And the pacing could be generously described as “molasses in a walker.”
The movie stars Christopher Plummer as Zev Guttman, a widowed retiree with dementia who, after the death of his wife, is reminded (several times) by his wheelchair-bound bestie Max (played by Martin Landau in full “I’m only doing this for the mortgage” mode) that he made a promise: to track down and kill the Nazi guard responsible for murdering their families at Auschwitz. Max, the brains of the operation, can’t leave the nursing home. So he sends Zev—armed with a letter explaining the mission, his identity, and a few moral bullet points—on a cross-country trip to find the Nazi and shoot him in the face. Think The Bourne Identity, but starring your confused grandpa and filmed entirely at 4 miles per hour.
Egoyan, clearly trying to blend his trademark emotional detachment with a genre film, ends up creating something that’s neither: not thrilling enough to be a revenge movie, and too ridiculous to be a meditation on trauma. Remember is what happens when a filmmaker mistakes “slow and solemn” for “meaningful.” It plays like a low-budget thriller shot inside a retirement brochure, complete with muted color palettes, soft piano music, and actors who look like they’re constantly trying to remember where they parked their Rascal scooters.
Zev, God bless him, is a man who can’t remember what day it is, but is somehow able to navigate airports, rent cars, buy a Glock, and commit felony murder without triggering any security alerts or raising the suspicion of a single rental clerk. One minute he’s asking where the bathroom is; the next, he’s shooting someone in a farmhouse. You’d think a man with dementia traveling solo would run into some real logistical snags—lost meds, wrong hotel, accidentally joining a line dancing class—but no. Zev glides through this Nazi-killing mission like a confused Canadian James Bond, guided only by the power of exposition-heavy voiceovers and conveniently timed flashbacks.
Let’s talk about that letter. The film’s central gimmick is that Zev must constantly re-read a letter Max wrote to remind him what’s going on, à la Memento for AARP members. But while Memento used its structure to explore identity, memory, and trauma in an innovative way, Remember uses it as a lazy crutch. Every time Zev starts to forget something, he just pulls out the letter like it’s a grocery list for vengeance. “Dear Zev, your name is Zev. You are Jewish. You are on a mission to kill a Nazi. P.S. Remember to hydrate.” It’s unintentionally hilarious and deeply undermines any suspense, since the movie constantly has to remind the main character—and the audience—what the hell is going on.
The film also plays fast and loose with geography. Zev visits multiple men named Rudy Kurlander (apparently a very common name among post-war Nazi fugitives), each more absurd than the last. One is a German shepherd-loving skinhead with a Confederate flag and Nazi memorabilia in every room. Another is a mild-mannered gay man whose only crime is existing in this movie. Zev bumbles from one awkward encounter to the next like an elderly Inspector Clouseau, with each scene straining under the weight of implausibility and unintentional comedy.
Christopher Plummer, to his credit, is giving it everything he’s got. He’s one of the few reasons the film is even watchable. Plummer manages to convey grief, confusion, and quiet determination all at once—even while reading the same damn letter for the twelfth time. But even his dignity can’t save scenes where he forgets what he’s doing mid-conversation and the score swells like he’s just uncovered the lost city of Atlantis instead of a new wrinkle in Max’s letter.
The final twist—because yes, Egoyan can’t resist a twist—is meant to shatter the audience. It wants to leave you stunned, emotionally wrecked, maybe whispering “Oh my God” in slow horror. Instead, it lands like a deflating balloon in a hospice ward. I won’t spoil it (though the movie spoils itself in the first fifteen minutes), but let’s just say it involves a shocking revelation that somehow manages to be both deeply implausible and weirdly insensitive. It reframes the whole movie, sure—but only in the way that makes you realize you just wasted 95 minutes of your life watching a revenge tale that collapses under the weight of its own clumsy plot mechanics.
The cinematography, like the film itself, is polished but dead. Everything is overlit, overfiltered, and utterly joyless. Each scene looks like it was sponsored by a pharmaceutical company with a passion for bleak interiors. The dialogue is stilted, with characters constantly over-explaining things, lest the audience suffer the same memory issues as Zev.
Thematically, Remember tries to tackle big ideas—justice, memory, trauma, guilt—but it does so with all the nuance of a sledgehammer made of matzo. It treats its subject matter with reverence, sure, but not insight. The Holocaust is a backdrop, not an exploration. Grief is a prop. Dementia is a gimmick. The movie thinks it’s making a statement about the horrors of forgetting, but in reality, it forgets to be good.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 confused Nazi hunters.
Watch it if you’re really into watching your grandpa wander through airports and occasionally pull a gun on strangers. Everyone else: forget this movie like Zev forgets breakfast—early, often, and with zero guilt.