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Leonard is a man who is struggling to put his life back together after the brutal rape and murder of his wife. The most significant manifestation of Leonard';s injuries is that his short-term memory has been destroyed. Leonard retains awareness that his wife was brutally murdered, however, and he';s convinced that the culprit still walks the streets. Leonard is obsessed with the notion of taking revenge against the man who has ruined his life, and he sets out to find him, getting help from Natalie, who appears to be a sympathetic barmaid, and Teddy, who claims to be Leonard';s friend, even though Leonard senses that he cannot be trusted.
The young British writer and director Christopher Nolan, who has every intention of putting us through the mill, doubles his fun by running the whole story backward.
This is the kind of movie that gas-bag instructors use to illustrate the concept that one man's reality is another's fiction. But it's puny stuff compared to Kurosawa's Rashomon.
The three leads are excellent, but it's the masterful execution of an almost-too-clever-for-its-own-good concept which really makes this the most delicious kind of food for the mind.
Writer-director Christopher Nolan's second film is one of the most original and ultimately confounding mind games to reach the screen since The Usual Suspects.
The mystery requires a lot of concentration, but the stunning final scene is ample reward. Not just an indulgence, the ingenious structure makes the point that memory, although unreliable, is what we depend upon for our sense of reality.
If nothing else, Memento is a savvy comment on the queasy uncertainties of the postmodern condition, in which history goes no further back than yesterday's news.
This terrific movie, about one man's quest for vengeance, does everything a thriller is supposed to do: intrigue, involve and keep you guessing.
March 26, 2014
AV Club
The astonishing payoff takes the film to another level entirely, unleashing a battery of existential questions that shed new light on everything that precedes it.
Pearce's central performance is as compelling as the film's premise and Nolan's execution of it. In Pearce's hands, Leonard is a time bomb with a short fuse.