Remember

Christopher Plummer stars as Zev, a newly widowed Holocaust survivor suffering from dementia in Atom Egoyan’s chilly but overly broad mystery Remember. Reeling even further into memory loss after the death of his second wife, Zev slips out of his nursing home and embarks on a hazy mission of revenge against the Auschwitz butcher who murdered his entire family. Zev scrawls notes on his body in order to assist with his periodic memory resets, while a shadowy figure from his past guides him towards the (not very) shocking truth. In other words, this is basically a non-backward Memento with Alzheimer’s and Nazis, informed more by Canadian director Atom Egoyan’s career-long obsession with coping mechanisms in response to unspeakable tragedy than by concerns about momentum and suspense. Plummer does fine work in the lead role, but the supporting players tend to go way over-the-top, especially Dean Norris as a neo-Nazi cop. D.B.