Guy Pearce and Carrie-Anne Moss in "Memento."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film an: Stars: Guy Pearce Director: Christopher Nolan Rated: R, with violence, profanity and drug references Length: 116 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(April 13, 2001) -- Leonard Shelby is running down an alley. He looks between two houses and sees another guy on the run.

Leonard wonders, "Am I chasing him or is he chasing me?" He turns towards the man, only to discover the man is coming at him with gun raised. "Oops. He's after me," he says, turning on a dime.

That moment concisely summarizes Leonard's dilemma in the inventive new thriller, Memento.

Leonard (Guy Pearce) suffers from short-term memory loss. He forgets things that happen only moments before -- like being pursued in a chase. Typically, he doesn't know which end is up.

Yet he's trying to find the man who raped and murdered his wife, then bashed him in the head, creating his memory problem.

To help himself, Leonard takes Polaroids of everyone he meets. He writes down names and information on scraps of paper, and has the most important clues tattooed on his body.

Leonard only hopes that if he ever gets to enact revenge, he'll remember it long enough to savor it.

Memento offers a remarkable twist on the revenge thriller -- made even more challenging because the movie starts at the end.

The audience is told the story in reverse -- a series of sequences lined up in reverse order. That way, we share his loss of short-term memory.

If you're among those who place high value on originality, Memento has it in spades. And 29-year-old, English-born writer-director Christopher Nolan is responsible for cleverly adapting a short story by his brother, Jonathan.

As you might expect, Memento is a challenge for filmgoers. It's easy to get lost in the mazes of Memento.

You have to like puzzles. You have to make the effort. You have to pay attention.

Casual viewing isn't an option.

But the film's highly original concepts justify the effort. And so do the mercurial performances by Pearce and his co-stars Joe Pantoliano and Carrie-Anne Moss (both from The Matrix).

The Australian-born Pearce (the do-gooder cop in L.A. Confidential) offers a spot-on American accent, as well as a perfectly realized portrait of obsession, frustration, resourcefulness and resilience as the memory-drained Leonard.

Pantoliano is Teddy, the film's mystery man, who may or may not be a cop. He pops in and out of the story, serving alternately as Leonard's guardian angel, his tormenting Iago and his snitch.

And Moss is a barmaid with questionable ties to a drug dealer; she nonetheless tries to help Leonard.

It's not easy to summarize the plot of Memento; nor should I. More to the point, the story is an excuse to explore the broader mystery of memory and how it affects our lives.

That's what makes this strange, one-of-a-kind film worth remembering.