Christopher Plummer smooths out speed bumps in 'Remember'

It would be a mistake to think of Atom Egoyan's Nazi-hunter movie "Remember" as a serious Holocaust drama. "Remember" takes the Holocaust about as seriously as did Laurence Olivier's 1978 Hitler-clone thriller "The Boys From Brazil."

"Remember" is more like an AARP remake of "Hit Man" as filtered through "Memento."

The great Christopher Plummer performs 90 percent of the heavy dramatic lifting here, He renders his elderly dementia-prone Auschwitz survivor Zev Guttman with such clarity and gravitas that the numerous glitches and plot holes in Benjamin August's screenplay almost seem plausible.

At an assisted-living facility days after his wife dies, Zev is approached by his wheelchair-bound friend Max (Martin Landau) with a plan to avenge the murders of their families at Auschwitz.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center identifies four Germans using the name Rudy Kurlander in the U.S. and Canada. Max, convinced one must be the man who killed their families, gives Zev an envelope of cash and instructions on how to find him. Then do what must be done.

Zev slips out of the building and hails a cab. His mission begins. Except that Zev could be the worst assassin in movie history.

Easily misled and gullible, Zev can't remember what he's doing from day to day, and relies on Max's instructions (and ballpoint pen tattoos) to remind him.

Of course, Zev couldn't be lucky enough to get the right Rudy the first time, could he? Bruno Ganz, Heinz Lieven, Dean Norris and Jurgen Prochnow play the four Rudys, each an eccentric character threatening to take "Remember" in a starkly new direction.

Paul Sarossy's camera work augments the depth and scope of Egoyan's scenes, thereby avoiding a stilted TV production look.

Composer Mychael Danna's heavy use of strings provides constant levels of tension and mystery spurring "Remember" through its mercifully short running time.

Egoyan, bouncing back from 2015's "The Captive," employs Alfred Hitchcock's narrative credo to emphasize mood and emotion over logic and plausibility.

So, Plummer's perfectly pitched performance as the vulnerable Zev, struggling to retain his mind more than minding his mission, provides all the emotion necessary to overrule the most illogical of events.