Great psychological thriller

Rating: 9/10 (9 February 2006)

I have seen both "endings" of this movie. The first time I simply walked in on it with no preconceptions. I was mystified by the importance of Evan's childhood "blackouts" until the film later demonstrated that they were instances of a "future" Evan returning to his own past to "re-possess" his own childhood consciousness for a short time.
I take issue with the critics of this film. The writers & directors had to visually "imply" the gimmick of the movie: Evan could return to his childhood body at will and change his own past actions. No one in the film gave a monologue to inform the audience of the gimmick. A good deal of my pleasure in this film (very like "Memento") was figuring out how all the scenes fit together in the film's convoluted topology, and thus gaining access to the film's spiritual message: we can never entirely predict the outcomes of our actions - the human mind can conceive of God, but is far too predictively limited to play at "being God". Evan kept trying to produce good effects, but only succeeded in creating worse futures around him.
I was unsatisfied with both endings: The Director's Cut was too Dark; and the Theatrical Release was to "Hollywood Trite". For me, the old saw of undoing all changes and returning to an unmodified moment of the past and to the God/Tao/Destiny that naturally evolved from that pure moment would have been most satisfying, especially if Evan had retained the wisdom inspired by his memory of his failed "alternate reality" meddling.
All in all, a great movie for open minded thinkers and beginning philosophers - I have enjoyed it tremendously three times so far.