Latest review of 'Memento'

Rating: Null/10 (19 September 2004)

I found the idea of seeing a movie in reverse to be, if not unique, certainly rare. However, I don't think the movie works very well when studied closely. Guy Pierce's acting was almost non-existent. If, as he says, his last memory is of his wife dying, why does he never cry? He should be devastated by grief. (Mel Gibson in the first Lethal Weapon is in mourning and weeping openly 6 months after the death of his wife.) The plot device of short-term memory is a dicey tool to use anyway. This film is quite inconsistent with how long it takes to lose fresh memories. When Carrie-Ann Moss passes around his beer to be spit in and then gives it back to him, less than 30 seconds pass. No one could function with a condition like this!! When driving in a car, he wouldn't know if he was going to meet somebody 10 blocks away or be heading out of town to follow a new lead!
Carrie-Ann Moss' acting is equally bad. Or is her character just completely indifferent toward her boyfriend, even though the script tells us she is very close to him? The first time we see her, she sees Lenny, a complete stranger, pull up in her boyfriend's car, wearing her boyfriend's clothes! Is she upset, is she heartbroken, is she scared? None of the above. (Meryl Streep would certainly have handled that differently!)
As to Joe Pantoliano's character, we remains a mystery from start to finish. "Don't believe his lies". We are told this FIVE times. Yet the possibility that Lenny himself committed the murder is introduced. A friend of mine at work is convinced that Lenny DID kill his own wife. If he duped and killed the man that the police found dead in their apartment, the day his wife was killed, then who slammed his head into the mirror giving him the amnesia? Or are we expected to believe that two uninvolved criminals just happened to break in, the very night he murders his wife? Sure is overly convenient, plus the odds are astronomical!!
I have nothing against movies that send a sad or discouraging message about life. But, a mystery works best when by the end, the mystery is solved. Requiring the audience to watch the movie a second or even a third time to fully understand it, strikes me as just poor storytelling. As well as being a cheap ploy.