Could this be one of the best films ever?

Rating: Null/10 (16 January 2003)

This film is pure excellence. Much like Usual Suspects in 1995 this is a brilliantly written piece of low budget magic. It is original and surprising and has gone down as a cult classic, and deservedly so.
Much like Usual Suspects this doesn't have any out and out big Hollywood stars but does have some great actors who are recognizable. The film centres around Leonard Shelby, a man whose wife was brutally murdered also leaving him with a memory disorder, where by he cannot create new memories, so while trying to hunt down the killer he has to contend with the fact he forgets things in a matter of minutes. He overcomes this by routines, he writes things down, takes pictures and also tattoos himself.
This isn't, as most will know, a start to finish sort of film. The ingenious part is that the film starts with the end basically. Leonard has found the killer, played by Joe Pantoliano, and he kills him. Then the film plays backwards revealing how he tracked down the killer and some important facts he forgot.
Guy Pearce is very good in the lead, he certainly shows enough here to have warranted an Oscar nomination had he got one, and also Carrie Anne Moss as Natalie, who may or may not be a friend to help Leonard. Joe Pantoliano was as usual very good as were the rest of the cast.
This film is fantastic, genuinely surprising and a real lesson to the big Hollywood studio, that the art of writing a clever film is not dead. 10/10