The Underrated Christopher Plummer Mystery Thriller You Can Watch On Amazon

Before his recent passing, Christopher Plummer had a long acting career, from the 1965 musical The Sound of Music to 2019's mystery-thriller, Knives Out. Plenty of his films have received the attention they deserve, but the thriller Remember has been mostly, ironically forgotten. Directed by the acclaimed Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter, Chloe), Remember takes an unusual twist on the Holocaust film, setting an elderly man across the continent in search of vengeance.

Plummer plays the nursing home patient Zev Guttman, who survived Auschwitz but is now suffering from dementia and mourning the loss of his wife. His neighbor and fellow Auschwitz survivor, Max Rosenbaum (Martin Landau), reminds Zev that he promised to hunt down and take revenge on the Nazi guard that killed their families — a man now living in North America under a fake name. So Zev sets out on his mission, armed with a Glock 17 and a written note to remind him what said mission is. It's not Egoyan's first look at genocidal trauma — he and Plummer worked together previously on Ararat, a film about the generational experience of the Armenian genocide. Remember, he told Deadline, is "dealing with how memory can be denied and surpassed — and the corrosive effect that has on both the denier and the victim."

On Rotten Tomatoes, Remember has a respectable 70% approval rating from critics, and a slightly higher 79% from audiences. Plummer's performance in particular stood out to critics: "There is no actor currently at work capable of embodying the complexity of this character like Plummer. Zev is not to be pitied, nor scorned, nor stopped," wrote Scott Marks for San Diego Reader. Film critic Dwight Brown loved the puzzling screenplay, writing, "Zev's memory is so shot full of holes that it's like watching a senior citizen walk on to the set of Groundhog Day, unaware. Still, as Zev plods through, hunting down the right Rudy with the intent on exacting justice, his journey gets weirder, scarier and more brutal in ways that are so matter of fact you can't believe what you are watching."

Remember is available to rent on Amazon or stream with Showtime on Amazon Prime or Hulu.