Remember

In this unusual Holocaust-inspired revenge story, 90 year-old Zev Guttman (Christopher Plummer) has dementia, so he's confused every morning when he awakens, calling for his wife Ruth, who is dead. Zev lives in a nursing home, where his best friend is wheelchair-bound Max Rosenbaum (Martin Landau), who is hooked up to an oxygen tank. Both are Auschwitz survivors, and Max has come up with a plan to wreak revenge on the sadistic guard responsible for tormenting and exterminating their families. According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, SS Officer Otto Wallisch escaped from Germany and has been living in North America under the assumed identity of Rudy Kurlander. Having identified four elderly men with that name, Max gives Zev a thick envelope filled with cash, train and bus tickets, and an all-important letter detailing, step-by-step, his every move in a search to identify the culprit—and kill him. Although Zev's distraught son (Henry Czerny) issues a missing persons report, Zev evades an FBI background check when buying a Glock and slips into and out of Canada with an expired U.S. passport. Astutely directed by Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan, the film costars Jurgen Prochnow, Bruno Ganz, and Heinz Lieven as three of the four Rudys, with Dean Norris particularly effective as a virulently anti-Semitic cop. Recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by director Atom Egoyan, producer Robert Lantos, and writer Benjamin August, the behind-the-scenes featurettes “Performances to Remember” (17 min.) and “A Tapestry of Evil: Remembering the Past” (14 min.), and trailers. Exclusive to the Blu-ray release is a bonus UltraViolet copy of the film. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a fine drama.] (S. Granger)