If you want challenging and compelling entertainment, this is it.

Rating: 9/10 (22 February 2016)

Quite unlike anything I've seen before, this breathtaking yet disturbing thriller completely rewrites the rules.
Guy Pearce plays Leonard, a man who suffers from a rare condition as a result of an injury sustained when his wife was murdered, leaving him unable to remember events for more than a few minutes. Despite his condition, Leonard is determined to find his wife's killer.
Of course, the main character has almost no idea what he's doing or why, his sense of time and place fractured by his inability to remember. In order to convey something of Leonard's state of mind, Christopher Nolan confuses us with scenes overlapping, seeming to repeat. It takes us a while to realise that we started at the end and events are unfolding in reverse, revealing other events that lead up to what we just saw. It's quite simply a wonderful sleight of hand from Nolan, creating something disturbing and compelling. We are deliberately surprised, confounded and uncertain.
Guy Pearce is tremendous in the central role. We root for him, wanting him to find his wife's killer, as he struggles against his repeated memory loss. Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano are excellent as the friends he can never remember.
The film edges backwards to it's shocking climax. It's an ending I never imagined, and Nolan's magic trick is complete. If you want challenging and compelling entertainment, this is it.