The film's strongest point is its star, Ken Watanabe, whose portrayal is at times wincingly effective. The scene in which he collapses into a shrill, squealing breakdown in front of his wife was agonizing--in a "good" way. I totally bought him as the character he was playing. (On a selfish note, I did miss seeing him perform in English with a Japanese accent, since he has one of the coolest Japanese accents of all time. But that's my issue, not the film's...) Overall, a job very well done for Watanabe.

The film's primary drawbacks--aside from the painful subject matter, which may or may not be a drawback to you depending on your level of masochism--are twofold. First, the story, while compelling, felt too simple to fill out a 2-hour movie. There's not much to it aside from the protagonist's disintegration and its effect on his loved ones and colleagues. As a result, the second issue I had was that the establishing portion of the film (let's say, the first hour) felt repetitive. We keep witnessing Watanabe's lapses in memory and his resulting disorientation, over and over. You can only see this happen so many times before it gets irritating. It's one of those instances where the director should have opted to imply and summarize rather than explicitly show each single event to the audience.

The bottom line is that this is a very good film if you view it as a "tour de force performance" or as a "moving story". But as a film on the whole, it does have some flaws, primarily its tendency to overstate through repetition. But I say it's well worth a watch for anyone.