Hmm… Just watched it today, and am a little confused. I understand the whole back to front thing, but I didn’t get the conclusion. Did he actually kill the police officer? Was he really a police officer? I need some help
Yeah, he killed Teddy. Was Teddy a police officer? Well … you decide.
The point of the movie is that you don’t know. Is the world still there when you close your eyes? Its a koan. Like interface2x says, figure it out for yourself. 
I’m really confused because the movie is called Memento, not “Momento” (which kinda sounds like a supervillian whose powers include lots and lots of inertia).
He did kill Teddy, the police officer, at the “end” of the movie. The scene at the “beginning” shows him planting clues to himself to start a chain of events that will end with that result (i.e. writing “Don’t believe his lies” on Teddy’s picture and writing down Teddy’s licence plate as a “clue”). He’s sufficiently pissed at Teddy’s manipulation that he’s willing to eventually kill him, even though he knows he won’t remember why.
I believe Teddy was a cop because I don’t see any good evidence to the contrary. Teddy’s a slimy bastard of a cop, but a cop nonetheless.
I don’t normally bug people about their spelling, but I’ve seen this movie’s name misspelled over and over. Just remember the word “memory”; “memento” has the same root. (Let me pause to absorb the irony or requiring a mnemonic device to remember how to spell “memento”.)
At the “end” of the movie (the last part you see in the theater) it became clear that the protagonist’s brain disorder gave him a certain special kind of freedom; because he knew he wouldn’t remember having set things up, he felt free of moral responsibility for his actions. He stole the Jaguar by simply taking a picture of it and labeling it “My Car”.
I can’t help but wonder what would happen to the character after killing Teddy. Even if he didn’t go off after the “killer” again, what kind of life could he have? Doesn’t really matter, of course.
Ah, but that’s the best part of it. Here’s a guy who wakes up every fifteen minutes to an hour, enraged and thirsting for revenge, and sometimes he actually realizes his situation and works to perpetuate it. He destroys the evidence that he killed Teddy, just as he apparently had the “I Did It !” tattoo removed from his chest. He’s a vengeance machine who can never stop, and can never heal himself. Exquisite.
He never had the “I did it!” tattoo on his chest. That brief scene we see with him, the aforementioned tattoo and his very animated dead wife is not a real memory.
Do a search of the archives here.
There’s more than you want to know…
I thought it was clear that this memory was accurate, and it was the “John G murdered my wife” tattoo that was not for real. I guess the other way around makes some sense too, but why do you think it?
The reason I think the “I did it!” tattoo wasn’t real was because when we see him with it, he’s lying in bed next to his wife. Why would he have a tattoo proving he killed his wife’s killer, if she’s still alive?
Now my question to you is, why do you think the “John G. murdered my wife” tattoo is not real? I thought that this was made very clear…we see the tattoo numerous times, and it’s the basis for most of the plot!
At some point in the past, he was fed the name “John G.” by Teddy, most likely to help him kill some drug dealer. The tattoo is plain as day & is referred to quite a bit. Why in the world do you think it didn’t really exist?
Ah! I understand the confusion now. I don’t think that that tattoo is not real per se; I think it’s a lie. Here’s the sequence of events as I imagine them happening:[ul][li]John G. breaks into Lenny’s happy home, and almost kills his wife, and gives him anterograde amnesia. Maybe he rapes Lenny’s wife too; but that’s optional.[/li][li]Lenny’s wife recovers, but Lenny still wants to get the guy. He tattoos “John G. raped my wife. Find him and kill him.” on his body. The name he gets from the incomplete police report, which Teddy may or may not have had something to do with.[/li][li]Lenny goes on a vendetta and finds and kills the first (and the real) John G. He gets the “I did it!” tattoo and all is well. (We see a fleeting image of this.)[/li][li]That is, until Lenny’s wife, unable to cope with her husband’s condition, commits suicide, with Lenny’s assistance. This drives Lenny crazy.[/li][li]Lenny, unable to cope with the reality of what happened, and knowing that he’ll be able to trick himself into believing otherwise, changes his tattoo to say “John G. raped and murdered…”, and removes his “I did it!” tattoo. He also manages to alter his memory of Sammy, so that even though the memories of a woman who had used her husband to kill herself are there, they are in the form of Sammy’s wife, not his.[/li][li]He’s put in a mental institution and escapes. (This is to justify the fleeting glimpse we see of him in a straight jacket, and also the extra-movie stuff about his being committed.)[/li][li]He sees what’s tattooed on his chest, and believes that John G. did indeed murder his wife. It’s also because he wants to believe it. He’s addicted to the chase.[/li]Somewhere in here he teams up with Teddy (a sleazy cop) and goes on hunt after hunt.[/ul]Well, I only saw it once, and it was a while ago, but that’s what I thought when I saw it. It’s the explanation that makes the most sense to me.