Rolling Stone
"...[A] mesmerizing mind-bender....A new classic among thrillers....This jolting jigsaw puzzle of a movie grabs you and won't let go..." 03/15/2001 p.85-6Movieline's Hollywood Life
"...A stylish thriller with a touch of novelty....This mind-teasing puzzle is engrossing..." 03/01/2001 p.34-7 Entertainment Weekly
"...MEMENTO has the uniquely disorienting quality of a puzzle....It's the rare mystery in which every moment lives....Pearce's extraordinary performance lends even the smallest events the aura of a life-or-death search..." 03/23/2001 p.77 New York Times
"...Ingenious....MEMENTO is a brilliant feat of rug-pulling, sure to delight fans of movies like THE USUAL SUSPECTS and PI..." 3/16/2001 p.E14 USA Today
"...A terrifically compelling little mystery..." 03/16/2001 p.3E Hollywood Reporter
"...Nolan has literally turned the genre inside-out and reassembled it as an intriguing jigsaw puzzle of a whodunit..." 09/12/2000 p.86-94 Los Angeles Times
"...Exceptional....A haunting, nervy thriller....MEMENTO is a provocatively structured and thrillingly executed film noir..." 03/16/2001 p.2 Chicago Sun-Times
"...MEMENTO is a diabolical and absorbing experience..." 04/13/2001 p.27 Uncut
"MEMENTO marks a quantum leap in the thriller genre..." 01/01/2005 p.162 ReelViews 9 of 10
Memento doesn't stop with a great premise. In fact, what really distinguishes this film is its brilliant, innovative structure. Nolan has elected to tell the story backwards. He starts at the end and finishes near the beginning. The main narrative is presented as a series of three-to-eight minute segments, each of which ends where the previous one began. - James Berardinelli
Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
The purpose of the movie is not for us to solve the murder of the wife ("I can't remember to forget you," he says of her). If we leave the theater not sure exactly what happened, that's fair enough. The movie is more like a poignant exercise, in which Leonard's residual code of honor pushes him through a fog of amnesia toward what he feels is his moral duty. The movie doesn't supply the usual payoff of a thriller (how can it?), but it's uncanny in evoking a state of mind. Maybe telling it backward is Nolan's way of forcing us to identify with the hero. Hey, we all just got here. - Roger Ebert
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