LEONARD Shelby would not remember a word of this review. Since the rape and murder of his wife, he has suffered from short-term memory loss, a rare disorder that renders him incapable of forming new memories and enables innovative film-maker Christopher Nolan to experiment with unconventional, looping storytelling techniques in this Groundhog Day of a thriller.

Shelby (a blond-rinsed Guy Pearce) will forget any experience or encounter within minutes. To navigate his way around this predicament, he snaps Polaroids, makes notes on them, writes lists and tattoos his shaven body with vital information as he seeks to solve the mystery of his wife's brutal death and wreak revenge. Yet how can he trust anyone, most of all himself, when every fresh thought startles and confuses him?

To add to that sense of confusion, Nolan films with both forward and backward momentum. On the one hand, Pearce's gnarled Shelby relentlessly ploughs on with his investigations; on the other Nolan takes the narrative ever further into the past through a series of overlapping flashbacks and replays, in which Shelby's grasp of events alters and falters. "Now, where was I? he asks at the finale, no nearer a solution.

For all but the amnesiac Leonard Shelby, the labyrinthine mind games of Memento will live long in the memory.