So What?!? The Characters are Pure Cardboard

Rating: 1/10 (21 November 2001)

I saw this film after hearing all the hype while on my last trip back to the States. It turns out that it's much ado about nothing.
I was not impressed. In fact, I was almost depressed that something so evidently sub-par was being touted as nothing short of a revelation.
So what if the film has an unusual non-linear narrative structure??? So what if it's stylish, hip and has great cinematography? I don't care for the characters one bit! They're pure cardboard, impossible to relate to, sketchy at best - even Guy Pearce's character. They exist solely as pegs for a context which is not all that interesting in and of itself - in fact, it's downright pedestrian. A guy's wife is raped and killed and he goes after the killer when he wakes up - how many times has that one been used? The whole thing is contrived and stinks of an exercise - it's just soulless mental masturbation, and anyone getting off on it is really selling themselves short!
Even the much-talked about backwards narrative structure isn't all that new. It's been done before in a film by David Hugh Jones called BETRAYAL, with Jeremy Irons, Patricia Hodge and Ben Kingsley. Even though the story is quite different from this film, BETRAYAL has everything this film lacks - strong characterizations and people that you actually care about. In BETRAYAL, you anxiously await the next flashback because you are genuinely concerned about the characters' fate. MEMENTO, with each flashback, just gets more and more annoying.
It WAS slightly intriguing to see Joe Pantoliano and Carrie-Anne Moss (refugees from THE MATRIX) in this together, as it is another play on "What is really real?" but this is hardly a benefit. However, I don't blame the actors one bit - they were just not given much to work with.
Incidentally, Guy Pearce IS someone to watch. It'd be interesting to see him and Brad Pitt together in a film - they'd be very believable as brothers.