The Stopped-Time Man

Rating: Null/10 (20 October 2001)

A man who cannot create new memories cannot move forward in time. For Leonard Shelby, time stopped the instant he suffered head trauma while trying to save his wife during a robbery-rape. Unable to retain any new memories, Leonard will never move past that horrific event in which he lost his wife, his home, and everything else except an all-consuming drive for revenge on those responsible.
There's reason for enthusiasm and hyperbole from folks who see MEMENTO: it's a film that harkens back to the 1970s, a time of well-written, mind-blowing experiences that become part of the viewer, like an actual event, a memory. MEMENTO is that modern rarity, a character-driven story that refuses to flinch, and viewers appreciate it. After all, in this decade of putrid, talentless filmmaking, where would movies (American anyway) be without Tarantino's Jules Winnfield, or Mr. White? Or the Coens' Dude? Soderbergh's limey Wilson? Or Keyser Soze? Characters with force of will, who follow their natures and dominate space and time, as real people met, inawed-by, or feared.
Leonard Shelby's story is ingrained in truth, and believability. A two-dimensional creation lives and breathes. He becomes part of the viewer.
There is nothing worse than the Hell of Leonard Shelby, a man cursed to a single moment in time, his wife's rape-murder, and his inability to even remember whatever revenge he may take. The concept alone guarantees this film is unforgettable, but it is also the writing, the direction of Nolan, and the performance of Pierce.
I'd like to correct the misconception of the intrinsic fault in this film, pointed out by many critics, that Leonard would be unable to remember he has a "condition" of complete short-term memory loss, since he should not remember anything after his injury and does not have a tattoo on his body, say, that states the fact of it, so he'd understand where, what and how he is where he is.
Leonard does indeed have this "trigger" for his understanding of his "condition". It is on his hand, SAMMY JANKIS. Sammy's story, part of Leonard's pre-injury life, is an automatic symbol for everything Leonard is going through, as the two men share almost the same condition, and more. Leonard sees the name and remembers, and that's the answer to that.
MEMENTO is a complete puzzle, a sequence of nightmare that is inescapable, a world in which a man who stops moving in time becomes the anchor for corrupt cops and lost women, where answers tear up bodies and minds like bullets. Leonard is a living weapon of revenge, and
lives in a perpetual state of recoil, that stunned silence between the just-fired and the impact. An incredible film.