Will definitely screw with your mind!

Rating: Null/10 (27 May 2001)

I really liked this movie and my fiance and I had a good time discussing it afterwards. MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! I had a lot of questions about the film, and I'm sure that others did, so this is going to be my attempt to puzzle things out. My major questions about the film revolved around one of Teddy's last conversations with Lenny, when he said that Sammy Jankis was really Lenny, and that Lenny's wife had died from an insulin overdose that he gave her. Then there are two memory short scenes showing first, Lenny giving his wife an insulin shot and second, pinching her on the thigh. This second short scene was also shown earlier in the film. Then towards the very very end we see Lenny in bed with his wife and he already has a tattoo-though it did not look to me like the tattoos he had in the rest of the film. These small scenes really confused me. I could not be sure if Teddy was telling the truth or lying to Lenny. I think that obviously the point of the film is that Lenny was lying to himself. We start off by thinking that he is very organized and really does rely on facts, and sadly, we discover throughout the course of the film that his `evidence' is completely based on intuition and emotion, and that he (and everyone else around him) is totally untrustworthy.
What I eventually decided was that those scenes don't matter. Teddy might very well be John G. He might not be. However, if Teddy is John G. it is not for the reasons that Lenny thinks he is-the license plate, the name, etc.My fiancé pointed out that Lenny said he did not know how long it had been since his wife's death. Since he has the police report, he should know this. This information should be printed on the police report. So, Lenny is obviously deluding himself about some things. As far as the truck and if Lenny really was an insurance investigator, since we don't know how long it's been since his wife's death, we don't know what he's been doing during that time. I checked out the website looking for some answers (It's really cool by the way) and on it they say that Lenny was in a mental hospital for a while. So who knows how long it's been and what he was doing during that time. It also show police reports about his wife's death, so we do know that's true, so I'll believe that Teddy was lying about Lenny being Sammy Jankis (why do I feel like Agatha Christie all of a sudden???).
Everyone was lying to Lenny and using him, but that doesn't make the premise untrue. John G. could be anyone or no one. I also wouldn't call the backwards-forwards format of the film a gimmick. It simply mirrors Lenny's confusion.