A monumentally over-rated wankfest.

Rating: 1/10 (5 September 2001)

After all this time, I am still not sure why I hate this movie so much. Perhaps it is because so much undeserved praise was heaped on this pretentious and presumptuous MTV video with aspirations to being a "serious" movie. It meanders, sometimes careens, from one gratuitous plot twist to the next, yet in reality very little actually happens. In the end, this is not a bad approach if we are going to get character development instead. Alas, none is here. The characters might as well have had their profiles tattooed on them, like the main character does, because they are no less obvious and devoid of subtlety.
Memento confuses plot intricacy for story, of which there is precious little here. Granted the story had to be sparse to further the self-conscious conceit that ties up this formulaic and trite little package with a bow. Now don't get me wrong. Any film that causes us to reconsider what we think we know and to see things in ways to which we are not accustomed is great. But that must not be confused with clumsy subterfuges designed to suggest one thing and mean another. That's just plain silly and cheap, a mindless maze that wanders aimlessly until the author runs out of gas. That's what we have here.
Guy Pearce, the Other Australian Actor, is good, reminding me at times of Brad Pitt before he demonstrated so convincingly time and again his epic lack of talent. Unlike Brad, though, Guy is talented. Perhaps too talented for such a claustrophobic little film. And what's up with Joe Pantoliano? Let's see, maybe we can give just him a sandwich board to carry around announcing his ulterior motive in every scene. He is the most typecast actor around, and he could phone in a performance with more mystery and finesse.
Still without Guy and Joe, formidable talents in better vehicles, this film would be desolate. Oh, there's lots of little black and white vignettes, and the story is told backwards which has been universally acclaimed as genius, but which, at least for me, smacks of artifice and cliché.
Look beyond the gimmickry, and you have a film that aches for a purpose, a theme, a message. What it has instead is a sort of Michael Mann vapidity that even throws in the car and the suit. Holy Don Johnson, Batman.
I cannot begin to tell you how over-rated this movie is. It is a favorite of ersatz intellectuals who want to prove their smarts and congratulate themsevles by "figuring out" this empty, pointless wankfest of a monumentally overrated movie.