Interesting Concept, Flawed Execution (5/10)

Rating: 6/10 (1 February 2002)

(I saw this on DVD, YMMV)
Summary:
Leonard Shelby is a man who has no short term memory since being injured defending his wife an attack that resulted in her rape and murder. For some reason that is not really clear, the police have never caught the attackers, so Leonard has vowed to hunt down and kill them. However, he cannot remember a thing that has happened since the day he lost his short-term memory and ten minutes ago. Therefore, he is constantly having no memory of why he is doing things and uses a series of pictures and notes to help sort it out.
To give the same feeling to the audience, the director shows the scenes in reverse order. The opening scene of the movie essentially has Leonard looking at a picture of Teddy with the words "kill him" written underneath in his handwriting. Leonard proceeds to kill Teddy. Just as that is all Leonard has to go on, that is all the audience has. Then the movie backs up a little bit and shows Leonard gleaning the last bit of information that convinces him Teddy is the killer and we see him actually writing "kill him" on Teddy's picture. This backing up continues until we find out the real secrets in the movie.
The Good:
Guy Pierce gives a very good performance as Leonard.
The transitions between the scenes are very smooth. There is just enough overlap at the start and end of each scene that the transitions are very easy to follow. In addition, there is a small part of the film that runs forward in time, mostly Leonard telling a backstory to someone on the phone. These are easily distinguished by being shot in black and white, while the rest of the film is in color.
The Bad:
There is an unrelenting lust for death that drives Leonard. No one, not even Teddy who might be a cop, discusses the idea of vigilantism. That Leonard should hunt down and kill whoever he thinks might be the killer, the justice system be damned, is never questioned. It is the mindless writing of a bad action movie at work here.
Although the reverse order presentation is easy to follow, it began to wear thin. Perhaps it is because, and other reviewers have mentioned, that this story told in chronological order would be weak, at best. The film relies too much on this one trick of storytelling without anything else to really back it up.
The clincher that something is desperately wrong is the pat summation speech at the end of the film. Throughout the film, the reliance is on how Leonard is going to remember some particular fact, but we are only given the quickest glances of the actual results of Leonard's investigations. In an attempt to make a rather dull story seem mysterious, the makers have told us so little about the story that they make up for the error with "the speech that explains everything."
5/10