Ignorance is NOT blizz...

Rating: 10/10 (13 March 2002)

This movie came as a huge surprise on me in a very positive way. Once in a while there are screenwriters and/or directors who really want to do something extraordinary to impress the viewers of their production. As an example, Groundhog Day had the main character relive the same day over and over again for ages until he finally got the girl of his dreams in the end, and it worked. Fight Club also gave you an intense story where two very different characters slowly evolved to a movie climax rarely seen, because to most people the answer to all the story's conflicts is to unimaginable. A closer example to "Memento" is "The Usual Suspects" from 1994, which gave you a very exciting story set in the criminal underworld run by Kayzer Zose, a man everybody fears but no one knows who he is...a lot like the main character in "Memento."
The story is about insurance investigator Leonard, who suffers from short-term memory loss. Leonard got injured after intervening on his wife's murder. The murderer was still there when Leonard walked in on them, thus the main character ended up with a cracked skull (figuratively speaking).
The movie's opening scene is where most crime stories would end; the main character gets his wife's murderer. The rest of the movie is built upon the fragments of memories that led Leonard getting his guy, in other words this movie is kind of told backwards, starting from the mentioned opening scene and ending where the whole situation actually begun... sound confusing? Well, I was confused for about fifteen minutes but once I understood what was going on the rest was just pure genius. At one point I asked myself: "How can a story told backwards actually get more exciting by the minute?" As much as I would give you some information about this, you really have to see the movie for yourself to actually understand what a gem this really is. The tension curve is always rising, with an ending so surprisingly good that this movie is up there with stunners like aforementioned "The Usual Suspects" and "Fight Club."
This is a totally unmissable movie for lovers of the crime/mystery genre.