Russell Steinberg

Surprisingly juvenile. Characters so banal they’re not worth knowing. Plot so hopelessly tangled that none of the characters or audience have a clue. In a painful way, most of the dialogue tries to explain the plot, like the embarrassing in-the-movie explanation in Inception. Acting not required. Everything that gripped me in Memento—all the time retrogrades—here seems dissicated. At the end we’re left with nothing. Nolan is a brilliant filmmaker and visionary who is stuck in his own schtick, like a fly in flypaper.