A movie about amnesia I'll never forget

Rating: Null/10 (22 January 2001)

Memento runs in reverse chronology - one of the main characters dies in the first scene. For a split second, I thought the whole movie would flow backwards, but scenes link in and it's pretty easy to keep track, but you need full concentration!
The basic plot revolves around Leonard Shelby (Pearce) who has no short term memory since the rape and murder of his wife. He tattoos himself, takes numerous photographs and makes notes in order to conduct his life, which is focused on the task of gaining vengeance for her death.
The logic of time suggests that knowing what has happened in the future would help with understanding the past - however, this is a dangerous route to follow in the case of this picture and I was constantly furrowing my brow trying to put into context what I was seeing. I'd heard of anterograde (apologies if that's a mispelling?) amnesia before from studying Psychology and had seen a documentary about a sufferer, who's wife killed herself because she couldn't cope with the heartache of her husband not remembering her, which gave Memento a real emotional edge for me, and there were some quite poignant moments where Leonard recalls his wife and the intangiables which truly characterise 'knowing' someone..
Guy Pearce (who if he keeps up like this, will never, ever be referred to as 'Mike out of Neighbours' again is good in a difficult role, but the supporting cast are tremendous, especially Joe Pantoliano as Teddy and Carrie-Anne Moss as Natalie, two of Lenny's 'friends'.

It's hard to say too much about this without spoiling it, so I'd just recommend anyone to give this a go.. It's certainly not your average run of the mill revenge thriller, but it is engrossing from start to finish and the 2 hours seemed to pass in about half the time!
9/10.