"It's amazing what a little brain damage will do for your credibility".

Rating: 9/10 (14 October 2011)

I just watched this picture three times in five days, and before you get around to asking - no, I'm not a glutton for punishment. It's just that I was totally fascinated with the way the story was presented, as if it was rigged with a perpetual rewind button that brings the viewer back a couple days prior to the last rewind. These kinds of stories have a way of making my head hurt, but there was something about this one that was different. Maybe it's the way the story had you empathizing with Guy Pearce's character Lenny. The man was relentless in his quest to find his wife's murderer, but at the same time, that murder might not have ever really happened. There are literally as many interpretations of this picture as there are people who have seen it, and reading some of the other viewer posts and discussion threads are bound to move even the firmest of opinions to yet another different conclusion. So in that respect, the film invites criticism for being nothing more than a gimmick, even if a thought provoking and mind bending gimmick. I have to say, I usually like my movies wrapped up in forthright fashion, even if I don't like the resolution. But here it's virtually impossible to know anything for sure because it's all based on Lenny's reconstruction of events, relying on facts and not memories, as he explains in one of the sequences to Teddy (Joe Pantoliano). But what happens when the facts can metamorphose as they did here? I just know I can't watch this again for awhile because I've come to enough different conclusions already.