Genius

Rating: 8/10 (25 July 2012)

'Memento' is quite a confusing film which takes a little bit of time to make sense. It can be quite difficult to understand initially because the film doesn't play out in the correct order, you're finding out different pieces of the story at different times and you slowly begin to understand what's going on.
It's very clever; to film this and break it up to portray it in a mixed up order must be really difficult and Christopher Nolan has done a great job. The script is really good; a film like this can make it really easy to make mistakes and he's done a great job in making sure the story makes sense. The story itself is really interesting and the way in which it has been filmed reflects Leonard's mindset.
The acting performances (of which there is really only three) are pretty good. Guy Pearce performs really well in this; his character involves a wide range of emotions and he portrays most of them really well, sometimes his dialogue can be a bit wooden but it never lasts long enough to have a negative effect on the film. Joe Pantoliano also does a good job here - he plays his ambiguous character really well. The worst performance of the three is Carrie-Anne Moss; she doesn't really have an impact on the film and some scenes where her character plays a crucial role in a scene she fails to evoke enough emotion to convince viewers.
The film overall is really good, you never quite manage to determine the ending until it actually occurs and the ending is excellent. There are a lot of films where half-way through you can guess the ending correctly but this is not the case with 'Memento', really worth a watch especially if you have seen any of Christopher Nolan's previous films.