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Memento(2001)
Independent Mar 16, 2001 | Moderate
Leonard Shelby, an insurance investigator, suffers from anterograde amnesia and uses notes and tattoos to hunt for the man he thinks killed his wife, which is the last thing he remembers.
Note: Distributed by Newmarket Films
Releases
Original Release | Mar 16, 2001
- May 28, 2001 | Moderate
Box Office
Results
$235,488
$25,544,867
$14,502,211
$40,047,236
Technical Specifications
Sound Mix: Dolby Digital
Aspect Ratio: 2.39 : 1
Other Details
Country of Origin: United States
Language: English
Showtimes
Your Location or
(U.S. Only)
Summaries
Plot Summary
- Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), a man whose short term memory is damaged when he is struck in the head while confronting two people who are attacking his wife. Leonard kills one of the attackers and one of the last things Leonard remembers is his wife dying. Leonard then devotes his life to finding and killing the second attacker. The movie has color and black and white sequences. The black & white sequences proceed in chronological order, the color sequences are in reverse chronological order.Leonard wakes up in a room at Discount Inn puzzled. An unknown caller calls. Leonard says that he suffers from Anterograde amnesia, a condition which makes him unable to create new memories. He describes the condition by detailing the story of Sammy Jankis (Stephen Tobolowsky). Leonard has a system of notes to bring him up to speed every time his memory resets. Leonard's tattoo: "JOHN G. RAPED AND MURDERED MY WIFE" as well as other clues tattooed on his body.Leonard was an insurance investigator & investigated Sammy. Sammy's claim was denied as the company classified his symptoms as mental. Mrs Jankins tried to convince Leonard, but he didn't change his opinion. She went into a coma & never recovered & Sammy went to a mental hospital. The unknown caller talks about how police never believed Leonard's story of a second attacker. The caller says he is a cop & provides additional clues. Leonard tattoos the fact the 2nd attacker was a drug dealer, Jimmy Grantz and tells Leonard that he has set up a meeting with Jimmy. Leonard agrees to meet the caller in the motel lobby.In the lobby, Leonard meets (Joe Pantoliano) "Officer Gammell". Gammel says that Leonard should call him "Teddy" since he is "undercover". Teddy sends Leonard to an abandoned building. When Jimmy Grantz (Larry Holden) arrives, he recognizes Leonard as the man with the memory condition. Leonard threatens Jimmy. Jimmy pleads & tells Leonard that there is $200,000 in the trunk of his car for payment of the drugs that Teddy was to have brought to the meeting. Leonard strangles Jimmy, takes a Polaroid photo of his body, and starts putting on Jimmy's clothes. As the photo of Jimmy's body develops, the film gradually goes from black and white into color.As Leonard drags Jimmy into the basement, he hears Jimmy whisper "Sammy..." before dying. Leonard concludes that if Jimmy knew about Sammy, he was not the second attacker. Teddy arrives & finally admits that Jimmy Grantz was a drug dealer who did not have anything to do with his wife's killing. Teddy tells Leonard that his wife survived the attack. he says, Sammy Jankis was a fraud who was not even married and it was Leonard's wife who was diabetic. Teddy claims to be the police officer who investigated his wife's murder. He says he believed him about the second attacker and helped him track down and kill the real John G. more than a year ago. Teddy claims that he took a picture of a happy Leonard right after the second attacker was dead. Leonard forgot the killing and began searching for the dead John G. all over again. Teddy tells Leonard there are plenty of John Gs to find and admits that he is even a John G: his full name is John Edward Gammell and his mother calls him Teddy.Before Lenny can forget, he decides to continue the hunt, lying to himself to set himself up to kill Teddy. He records a note on Teddy's photo "Don't believe his lies", records Teddy's license plate number as John G's, and leaves himself a reminder to get a tattoo of the plate number, SG137IU. Leonard ditches Teddy by throwing Teddy's car keys into some weeds. Leonard then leaves his pickup truck at the refinery and drives away in Jimmy's Jaguar, still wearing Jimmy's clothes. After forgetting Teddy's revelations and the lies to himself, Leonard finds a tattoo parlor and has the license plate number tattooed onto his leg. Teddy sees the Jaguar parked outside and comes in, trying to move the car and get Lenny to get out of town in some new clothes. Leonard sees the note on the back of Teddy's pictures and decides to leave without him.Leonard finds a note in the pocket of Jimmy's suit coat, which he is wearing. The note is from a Natalie telling Jimmy to come to Ferdy's bar. Not realizing he is wearing Jimmy's clothes and driving Jimmy's car, Leonard thinks the note is for him and goes to meet Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss). He tells her about his condition. Natalie believes his story after a test. Natalie takes Leonard to her home and tells him he can stay with her. Leonard recounts what he remembers of the attack. He says he awoke to sounds, got a gun, and found his wife (Jorja Fox) being strangled. Leonard shot one intruder, but a second man clubbed him with a sap and smashed his head into a mirror. He goes on to explain that the cops did not believe there was a second attacker. Leonard tells Natalie that the second attacker was too smart and left the evidence to look like there was only one intruder.Natalie tricks Leonard into going after a man named Dodd (Callum Keith Rennie), who she claims has been harassing her for the money from Jimmy's prior drug deals. Leonard leaves to look for Dodd. Teddy is waiting for him as he leaves Natalie's home. Teddy tries to warn Leonard about Natalie, but after seeing the "Don't believe his lie" note on Teddy's picture does not believe him. Leonard does decide he shouldn't stay with Natalie and follows Teddy's advice to go to the Discount Inn.Leonard goes to the Discount Inn. Burt (Mark Boone Junior) at the front desk takes advantage of his condition by renting him a second room even though he had already paid for a first room. Leonard calls an escort service. When the escort arrives, Leonard explains to her that he wants only to relive going to sleep the night of the attack. After falling asleep, the escort wakes him. He asks the escort to leave. He then takes personal items belonging to his wife to a reservoir and burns them. In the morning, Leonard leaves the reservoir and is spotted by Dodd. Leonard escapes Dodd and goes to Dodd's motel to wait for him. When Dodd returns to his motel room, Leonard beats him and ties him up. Leonard calls Teddy for help in dealing with Dodd. Teddy comes to Dodd's motel room. Leonard and Teddy convince Dodd to leave town.Returning the favor of getting rid of Dodd, Leonard spends the night at Natalie's. In the morning she agrees to trace the license plate number tattooed on Leonard's leg. Later that day, Natalie gives him the information along with directions to "an abandoned place outside of town" where a guy she knew "used to do bigger deals". Leonard takes it back to his motel. At the motel, Leonard puts the clues together and concludes that Teddy is John Edward Gammell and must be the second attacker. He calls Teddy and they go to the same abandoned building where Jimmy Grantz was killed a few days earlier. Leonard then shoots Teddy in the head.
Storyline
- Memento chronicles two separate stories of Leonard, an ex-insurance investigator who can no longer build new memories, as he attempts to find the murderer of his wife, which is the last thing he remembers. One story line moves forward in time while the other tells the story backwards revealing more each time. — Scion013 A memory inside a memory, Memento is a complicated head spinning adventure. Leonard is determined to avenge his wife's murder. However, unable to remember anything that happens day-to-day due to a condition he sustained, short term memory loss, he has to write himself note after note that still don't mean anything after he falls asleep. The film goes back in time to reveal each little bit of the puzzle as he tries to find out the person who killed his wife and makes the audience feel just as confused as he is. The narrative closely follows a phone call Pearce has in which he talks about Sammy Jankis a former client of his who he believed had the same condition. The film takes an unexpected twist as the two characters have a lot more in common than is initially put across. — gab_b270@hotmail.com Leonard Shelby has short term memory loss resulting from an injury he sustained which was associated with the murder of his wife. He remembers his life prior to the incident, such as being an insurance claims investigator. He has learned to cope with his memory loss through dealing with a man named Sammy Jankis, a person he investigated professionally who also had short term memory issues. Some of these coping mechanism are to have a system of where to place things, talk to people face-to-face if possible rather than on the telephone as to be able to gauge their true intention, take Polaroids and write copious notes, the most important of those which he tattoos on his body so that they become permanent. Leonard's current mission is to find and kill his wife's murderer, who he believes is a man named John G., a name which is tattooed on his body. Over the course of a day, Leonard is assisted in this mission by a few people seemingly independent of each other, including a man named Teddy and a woman named Natalie. However, each time he meets them, he has no idea who they are, why they are helping him and if indeed they are working toward the same goal as him. — Huggo Leonard is an insurance investigator whose memory has been damaged following a head injury he sustained after intervening on his wife's murder. His quality of life has been severely hampered after this event, and he can now only live a comprehendable life by tattooing notes on himself and taking pictures of things with a Polaroid camera. The movie is told in forward flashes of events that are to come that compensate for his unreliable memory, during which he has liaisons with various complex characters. Leonard badly wants revenge for his wife's murder, but, as numerous characters explain, there may be little point if he won't remember it in order to provide closure for him. The movie veers between these future occurrences and a telephone conversation Leonard is having in his motel room in which he compares his current state to that of a client whose claim he once dealt with. — <tgraham@currantbun.com> 1 more All