Not as good as it's made out be, sadly.

Rating: Null/10 (27 September 2007)

I was quite disappointed in Memento, what with all the praise it has had since its release in 2000 and its coveted 27th spot in the IMDb top 250. I have also enjoyed two of Christopher Nolan's other later films, so when it came to watching Memento, it was safe to say my expectations were high.
I don't know though, memento just didn't click with me, i found it interesting for the most part and yes it held my attention, but it lacked any feeling. I mean, the main character has lost his wife, he's out trying to get revenge, but do we see any remorse or grievances from him? Nope, nowhere in Memento is it to be found. In fact, there's hardly any emotion at all present with the exception of the odd burst of unconvincing anger. This distinct lack of heart is what kills an otherwise intelligent and well constructed film.
The way in which it truly strikes hard at the movie's core is through the characters and their remarkably dull and uninteresting nature. It's not just the writing either, performances were rather mundane and unremarkable throughout with the odd exception here and there from Pantoliano and Tobolowsky. In fact I wasn't interested in any of the characters bar Leonard, but only because I wanted to know who the real killer was. Now when it got to this actual 'climatic' in the story, a lot of people probably loved the twist, but I didn't enjoy it at all and found it terribly anticlimactic. When the credits started rolling, I genuinely felt unfulfilled, which i realise may have been the point regarding how the character eventually feels at this point but I didn't buy it. I felt as if the entire movie had headed towards a solution that was surprising yes, but not all surprises are nice ones. This was a sucker punch and a half.
I have to say, I did enjoy the backwards narration of the story. It suited the theme of memory loss well and there is a scene where Leonard questions his wife reading a book that she had read numerous times before that basically gets to the point of why the story is told this way. There was the odd drag in the middle section of the film where scenes were sometimes cut a little too soon and frequently, most notably the ones involving the character 'Dobb'. As a narration style however, it was a completely original and fresh way to tell a tale.
As a whole, memento isn't a bad movie, it is actually quite good but that's all. There's nothing genuinely remarkable or memorable except the narration style, but then again maybe that was Nolan's intention.