INCEPTION

In a summer full of traditional Hollywood tried and true retreads, it's nice to see an original be given a chance to succeed. Inception, the new film from Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan, is definitely an original by today's standards. It's a thoroughly engaging and entertaining film that leaves a lot to admire, even if it's far from perfect.

There is no real easy way to summarize the film. To say the story is about a group of thieves that infiltrate their targets dreams to steal information is doing a disservice to the several layers of plot that is going on in the film. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, the leader of the group who is plagued with a lot of guilt from his dark troubled past. His past is starting to creep it's way into his work which is making things difficult for the team. Because of his past he is no longer able to return home to see his kids, he is forced to go on the run in order to avoid extradition back to the states. Ken Watanabe plays Saito, a powerful business man looking for help with his competition. Saito hires Cobb to do the opposite of their extraction process, he wants them to plant an idea into the mind of his lone rival Fischer, played by Cillian Murphy, to disband his father's empire and sell it off. Implanting the idea will require diving deep into the subconscious of their target by forcing dreams within dreams. If they are able to succeed than Saito can guarantee Cobb his freedom and the opportunity to return home to his family. Sounds simple enough right?

Inception is playing with multiple genres. Where Blade Runner combined Science Fiction with Film Noir, and The Matrix combined Science Fiction with Martial Arts, Inception is combining Science Fiction with a heist film, but mostly it's a character driven melodrama. It isn't the action or special effects that drive the film, it's the characters and the dialogue, and there is a lot of dialogue. Cobb is a complex and broken character. There is a lot going on under the surface, and in a line of work that deals mainly with what is going on under the surface this is a dangerous state of mind to be in. The danger and threat to the characters comes from Cobb's demons. If he can't come to terms with his past then it could kill his entire team. It's a fresh approach for a summer blockbuster and a nice change of pace.

It's a long film but it rarely slows down to make you notice. The third act does run a bit long and that is where a majority of the story happens, but it's engaging the entire time and it keeps things tense. The first half of the film is entirely set up. Lots of exposition with plenty of dialogue and explaining of the world and the upcoming assignment, but it never feels forced, but rather necessary. Nolan has created a complex plot that is extremely detailed, every step must be performed perfectly, and the entire process must be explained to the team, and in a sense the audience, in order to pull it off perfectly without not only failing, but getting themselves lost in the multiple dream worlds so as not to wake up a vegetable.

By the end of the film I found myself questioning what I had just seen. Did all of this really happen or was it in itself just a dream? It's totally left for interpretation and that is how I like it. The film is asking you from the very beginning to pay attention and it doesn't try to dumb things down to make you understand by pandering to the lowest common denominator. There are plenty of other films out this summer that take care of that for you. The movie doesn't apologize for it's intelligence, and I wish more filmmakers would follow suit.


Inception is a remarkably engaging story, expertly filmed by one of the best working today. I was truly amazed by the film and I will definitely need to see it again to try and catch some things I might have missed to help solve the ending a bit better. But as much as I loved the movie it is far from perfect. I would have loved to have seen some more crazy and outlandish scenarios in the deeper dream sequences. I loved the scenes in the hallway with Joseph Gordon-Levitt fighting while they are falling in the first dream and that sense of falling is implanted on their next level dream, causing a sense of weightlessness while he fights the bad guys. I would have liked to have seen more of that in the third dream state during the snow fight. Nolan has created a world where anything is possible and he has shown us as much during the training scenes with Ellen Page, I would have liked to have seen the stakes raised during these later scenes.

In the grand scheme of things these complaints are minor and they don't detract from the overall enjoyment of the film. It won't go down as a game changer like films such as Blade Runner and The Matrix may have, but it is a really good and well made film. Compared to what is out in theaters now this film is darn near masterful and it's just refreshing that in a season long parade of intellectually insulting garbage passed along as the best Hollywood has to offer, it's so refreshing to see something written with intelligence and thought that is also entertaining. The movie going experience would be so much better if all filmmakers and producers took as much care and craftsmanship into their product. If more people see more films like this and less of what is already out there than perhaps that would be the case. For that reason alone I can not recommend enough to see this movie, you'll be glad you did.