Innovative, kinetic thriller about one man's Memory Lane.

Rating: 8/10 (30 June 2012)

Memento, it's like two movies in one that meet in the middle for the story-altering climax.
Guy Pearce plays Leanord Shelby, an insurance claims investigator that suffers a rare form of amnesia that recalls the last 10 minutes of events on top of previously learned experiences after he and his wife are the victims of a burglary. Our story starts at the end of the story and moves back (forward?) to the beginning, along the way we meet a cast of eclectic characters including nominal police officer Teddy Gammell, a bartender called Natalie and a host of peripheral characters.
Since Leonard can't form deep memories, he uses tattoos to remember names and opinions on those he meets. Teddy isn't to be believed at all while Natalie helps him out of pity, for example. Inevitable, however, those around him take advantage of this situation by using him for their own ends. Natalie drives Leonard into a frenzy where he strikes her then waits outside for 20 minutes and reconstructs the incident into a situation to suit her own purposes, sending Leonard on a goose chase. Brilliant! Through the flashbacks we also see a couple afflicted with the same disease, where the husband cannot learn through practice but is denied a claim until his wife repeatedly asks him for a diabetes shot, which he repeats over and over and over until she passes away. We start seeing this couple as an extension of Leonard's own, especially when we see him giving her the same kind of shot! In the end, both halves of the movie collide and we witness the burglary, the assault on both of them and Teddy's role in the whole thing. Memento leaves your disoriented but yearning for the next piece of information that might give you the whole story, a story incomplete not through poor work by the writers, but rather because of one man's faulty recollections.
See it once at least just for the novelty and talking points.