Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1033 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-09-04
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 110 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
Guy Pearce (L.A. Confidential) and Joe Pantoliano (The Matrix) shine in this absolute stunner of a movie. Memento combines a bold, mind-bending script with compelling action and virtuoso performances. Pearce plays Leonard Shelby, hunting down the man who raped and murdered his wife. The problem is that "the incident" that robbed Leonard of his wife also stole his ability to make new memories. Unable to retain a location, a face, or a new clue on his own, Leonard continues his search with the help of notes, Polaroids, and even homemade tattoos for vital information.

Because of his condition, Leonard essentially lives his life in short, present-tense segments, with no clear idea of what's just happened to him. That's where Memento gets really interesting; the story begins at the end, and the movie jumps backward in 10-minute segments. The suspense of the movie lies not in discovering what happens, but in finding out why it happened. Amazingly, the movie achieves edge-of-your-seat excitement even as it moves backward in time, and it keeps the mind hopping as cause and effect are pieced together.

Pearce captures Leonard perfectly, conveying both the tragic romance of his quest and his wry humor in dealing with his condition. He is bolstered by several excellent supporting players, and the movie is all but stolen from him by Pantoliano, who delivers an amazing performance as Teddy, the guy who may or may not be on his side. Memento has an intriguing structure and even meditations on the nature of perception and meaning of life if you go looking for them, but it also functions just as well as a completely absorbing thriller. It's rare to find a movie this exciting with so much intelligence behind it. --Ali Davis

From The New Yorker
For those who enjoyed getting their heads around "Back to the Future," here is a movie that takes off in the opposite direction. Guy Pearce plays Leonard, a former insurance investigator who has mislaid his short-term memory; leave the room and come back ten minutes later, and he won't remember you. To help his case, and to solve the apparent murder of his wife, Leonard tattoos himself with memoranda and drives around the lowlier districts of L.A. County. At the same time, he has a couple of acquaintances (Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano) who seem eager both to support Leonard and to use his condition for their own unscrupulous ends. There is a fine, despairing comedy to these events-not just in our fidgety hero, but in the constant thwarting of our need to know. After all, the solution to a whodunit is never easy when you can't even be certain what got done. The young British writer and director Christopher Nolan, who has every intention of putting us through the mill, doubles his fun by running the whole story backward. Damn him. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Good non-formulaic thriller
Hard to explain the plot of this movie without revealing spoilers, so I'll just say Memento is definitely worth a view, maybe two. I do not watch a lot of mainstream movies, mostly because I don't feel like distilling the small amount of good material from the enormous volume of waste that is released into the theaters. But Memento was a terrific exception to the rule, and the filmmakers didn't even have to use special effects as a crutch since the story was compelling.

Astounding movie!
I first saw this movie at the theater when it caem out back in 2001 and I was astounded by it's creativity, and I couldn't wait till it came available on video so that I could watch it as many times as I wanted, and believe me I've seen it a lot. But there were still some things that I just seemed to be missing, but now that I've got the DVD showing the movie in it's chronological order, it now makes so much more sense to me. Ever since getting the new release I've researched the movie deeply and the amount of things that I've found that goes way past the end is staggering but interesting. If any one is interested in e-mailing me to further discuss this astounding movie, please feel free.

Momento
Momento is a mindbending thriller which follows its protagonist, played by Guy Pierce, from the end of his journey back through time to its beginning. In the film, Guy Pierce has a rare condition in which he has no short-term memory. This handicap makes everything harder, as he has to take polariod pictures of people he meets and writes notes upon them to remember something about that person. He is on a mission though, looking for the elusive John G. that raped and murdured his wife, and gave him his condition. When he finds John G. he is going to make him suffer just as he has suffered. Without ever lowering its sharp intensity, Momento comes to a close with not only a satisfying, but an all to poignant end.