One of the best films ever written

Rating: 9/10 (24 March 2010)

Leonard (Pearce) suffers from a condition where he can't make new memories and with the help of photographs, tries to recreate the memory of his wife's murderer.
After short UK hit Following, Christopher Nolan broke minds with his first major worldwide smash revolving around Guy Pearce's determined investigator and with a backwards storytelling motive and star studded performance, the director had rightfully cemented himself onto the big stage.
Opening with a glorious POV of a man holding a photograph of a murdered victim we are enticed into a completely unique psychological thriller revolving ideologies of misguided friendship, paranoia and vengeance that in eventuality is a complete mind warp of a crime thriller.
The ideology of backwards story telling allows the British director to engage audiences through numerous possibilities of solutions and explanations. For example as we start to realise which character is which and how their current presence affects Leonard, we realise the deadly truth of what is really happening.
Now I have never watched Gosford Park, but how can memento lose in the Oscar writing category to a period drama? Naivety is a quality I possess but a story told backwards with a revolution surrounding a short term memory condition and corrupting it with a fast flowing clue dropping narrative? Well, whatever the awards shelf has, this is by far one of the best plot devices ever devised.
Guy Pearce is strong enough to dive deep into his character's mental agony and carries the film's muddled plot on his shoulders, given the character a sharp and jittery edge that was necessary to generate the harsh nature of the mental handicap. Carrie-Anne Moss shines through a multi persona that gives off a great twist. Joe Pantoliano always seems to have a knowledge of access into great films with small roles. The Matrix, Risky Business, The Goonies and The Fugitive and his sharp voice cascades here to with his perfectly portrayed figure of either good or bad in the film's context that has many twists and turns and together with Pearce and Moss, reinstalls a feeling of corruption amongst friends and anonymous faces.
Filming in black and white for the flashback sequences are a stroke of genius as the mood and tone feel appropriate to distinguish how Leonard is dealing with the past and his current state of mind, particularly when on the phone.
Nolan appropriately uses a feeling of isolation and drama to gain a vibe of paranoia and clue dropping simulation to gain the ultimate film watching experience, collecting fast paced action sequences with dramatic implications that would also appear in his later films and thanks to his brother's terrific novel, makes one of the finest crime thrillers you will ever see, a true marvel.