Memento: Limited Edition (2000)


á      Starring: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Ann Moss, Joe Pantoliano
á      Directed by: Christopher Nolan
á      Studio: Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment
á      Video: 2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
á      Audio: English DTS 5.1, English DD 5.1, English DD 2.0 Surround
á      Subtitles: English, Spanish
á      Captions: English Closed Captions
á      Extras: Audio Commentary with Director Christopher Nolan, Anatomy of a Scene Featurette, Director's Shooting Script, Memento Mori Original Short Story, Production Stills and Sketches, International Marketing Campaign Materials, Theatrical Trailers, Plus Additional Hidden Features   
á      Length: 113 minutes
á      Rating: *****

A movie that made several movie critics' Top 10 Best Pictures of 2001 lists, Memento is a clever and original thriller.  Unfolding in a series of flashback sequences, the movie tells the story of Leonard Shelby.  Leonard, a former insurance investigator, was struck on the head one evening by criminals who broke into his house and raped his wife.  The blow left Leonard without the ability to retain short-term memories.  As such, Leonard must rely on photographs and body tattoos to remember people, conversations, etc.  Leonard believes that one of the criminals who broke into his house that fateful evening is responsible for the death of his wife.  He also believes that this criminal's name is John G. and Leonard has dedicated his life to finding and killing this man.  

The overall video quality of this DVD is excellent.  Images are very sharp with deep black levels.  Colors are vivid with fully saturated hues.  Picture defect mastering is perfect with no major flaws or digital compression artifacts.

The overall audio quality is above average with the English DTS 5.1 track serving as the basis for this review.  The soundtrack mix heavily favors the forward channels.  Dialogue is natural sounding and intelligible.  The surround channels are used sparingly, feature both music and ambient sounds, and also incorporate a couple of split channel effects.  Tactile sound effects are present in the form of subtle impacts primarily from the music soundtrack.

Reference equipment used for this review: [DVD player- Pioneer Elite DV-37; HDTV Monitor- Pioneer SD532HD5; A/V Receiver- Pioneer Elite VSX33TX; Speakers- BIC America V636 5.1 Channel Configuration; Tactile Transducers- Clark Synthesis TST329F]