Haunting narrative structure! Nothing more.

Rating: 6/10 (22 February 2002)

Memento is fairly ordinary. Nothing earth-shattering about it. The slight story boils down to a man being manipulated left and right because of his disability: short-term memory loss. The tattoo idea is hard to swallow and there's a big storyline goof in the film: during the B&W scenes, when Guy Pearce relates the story about a another couple, with the husband suffering from short term memory lost, I thought, "Now, what are the chances of having two men suffering from STML in one movie?" I thought about this during the first part of the movie and pretty much figured out that what was going to happen in the remainder of the film. Memento only has three main characters. So seeing the old couple in the B&W flashbacks dramatically reinforced the fact that few real people populated the landscape. And with the main character acting from a disability and revenge (when the main character of a story seeks revenge, it's always misguided revenge) the other two characters (natalie and the cop) manipulating Guy, well, there aren't that many likeable people around to care for. All of this could have been saved if the performances had been great but alas they're simply okay. Nothing spectacular.
There's very little emotional core to this movie, no gravity. The scenes occurred one right after the other, with none of them being more memorable than the next. Memento has a seamless blandness to it when riveting scenes and stylized action was in order. Hitchcock would have done so much more with this story: likeable or interesting characters, for starters. And loads of stylized filmmaking this film was in desperate need of.
But if there's one aspect where Memento succeeds is how it lingers in the mind. Its ultimate creation is that of a totally distorted world, and in the end, seems to be what the director wanted to achieve. You might not enjoy Memento while watching it. You might even find it trite and convoluted. But like its main character, you'll be left with fragments of images and distorted time frame weeks after you've seen it. Memento is much better when one thinks about it afterwards than while watching it.