brilliant fun!!! 4.5 out of 5

Rating: 10/10 (7 April 2005)

Memento is the type of movie you will watch once and immediately want to watch again. It is brilliant. I myself have watched it three times in the past two days: the first time, then I checked the official webpage (don't visit until after viewing) and comments here then watched it again, and then I watched it a third time, but this time backwards from scene to scene. It is suspenseful, funny, artistic,and keeps you guessing until the very end. Your ideas about the movie,the plot, and the characters will change many times while watching the film and the ending is nothing you expect. Even after it's over you still need to piece the movie together in your own mind to make some sense of it.
Basically, it's about a man Lenny who has a memory disorder where he has no short term memory. His goal throughout the movie is to find and kill the man who raped and murdered his wife. He helps himself "remember" things by taking pictures of important people and places he encounters while searching for his wife's murderer. The movie is shown through two intertwined "stories". One is shot in black and white and is mostly of Lenny talking with someone on the telephone. The other is in color and these scenes are shown to us backwards... that is, starting with what happened most recently in the story line and ending with what happened and the "beginning" of the storyline. The purpose of this is to take us into the mind of Lenny, who can't remember more than small chunks of what he's been doing before he forgets again.
While it sounds confusing, it's not one of those movies that you sit through the whole time getting frustrated and thinking I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT'S GOING ON. It's more like you keep asking questions and picking up clues as the movie progresses, keeping your interest so that you can't wait until your next question is answered... like a fun mystery. I found myself smiling and laughing each time the scenes jumped to another place in time because it's all crafted so cleverly and seamlessly. If you watch the movie, which I highly recommend that you do, it will be clearer to you. It's definitely a fun movie that's also very stylistic and intelligent. There are so many layers to Memento, that you can watch it multiple times and have a different opinion each time you watch it.... about characters, the plot, motives, and what the director and writer are trying to say about memory, truth, psychology, ethics, love and revenge.