Movie Review: Inception
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ken Watanabe, Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy, and Michael Caine
Written and directed by Christopher Nolan
As I’ve stated before on this web site, this summer’s crop of movies has been mostly uninspiring. With the exception of a few gems, we’ve been subjected to a seemingly endless parade of shallow sequels and brainless action films for the past two months. Christopher Nolan’s newest film Inception, however, is a breath of fresh air amongst many of the stale offererings we’ve had so far this summer. Like all of Nolan’s films, it’s a high-octane action film with an original concept, eye-popping visuals, and in ingenious script. Nolan could have taken the easy route after his wildly successful Batman sequel The Dark Knight in 2008 and just coasted on his cred for his next movie, but he chose instead to make his most ambitious film to date and therefore has made his best movie yet.
The plot of Inception takes the standard heist movie storyline and turns it on its ear. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Cobb, the leader of a group of theives who possess a device that make it possible to enter the dreams of their victims and steal valuable information from their minds. Actually, they don’t enter the dreams so much as they create the dreams themselves and bring the victim’s subconscious into it. The majority of the film follows Cobb and his team as they face their greatest challenge – instead of taking information, they plan on invading the subconscious of the heir to a vast energy corporation (Cillian Murphy) and plant an idea in his head that will benefit his competitors. This mission leads the entire team into a highly dangerous situation, mostly because Cobb is constantly being pursued in his dreams by his memories of Moll, his dead wife, played by Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard. The journey within the subconscious that these characters take is fascinating because it works both as an action movie and as a deep psychological profile of its main character.
For his seventh feature film, Nolan draws from the themes of all his previous efforts to make something truly original and groundbreaking in his already impressive film career. The character of Cobb shares many attributes with Nolan’s previous protagonists, from Leonard in Memento to Batman himself. The movie’s use of visual effects to service the storyline is very reminiscent of the original Matrix, yet it doesn’t get as overly showy as that previous film did. The two most effects-heavy scenes in the film are when Cobb shows his young protege Ariadne (Ellen Page) how to create the “dream world” in which they operate and when Cobb’s partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) does battle with their victim’s subconscious in a hotel hallway in one of the dreams. The less you know about these scenes, the more you will enjoy how they use special effects to thrill the viewer and reinforce the overall theme of the film.
Critics have called Nolan a modern-day Alfred Hitchcock, a comparison that I feel is not only fair but one-hundred percent accurate. No other director since Hitchcock has been able to marry deep psychological themes with highly entertaining plots like Nolan can. Inception has no shortage of thrilling action sequences, big explosions, and flawless effects and stunts, but they are all done to serve a deep, fascinating story revolving around these characters. Inception is not only the best film of the Summer so far – it’s quite definitely one of the best films of 2010 and receives 5 out of 5 Spinning Tops.
ITS AWESOME…………INCEPTION IS THE WELL MADE SCI-FI MOVIE……………..THE IDEA OF INCEPTING THE IDEA WAS EXCELLENT RATHER THAN THE STILLING OF IDEAS……………….ITS MOUTHWATERING MOVIE ….I WILL GIVE 4.5 STAR FOR INTERPRITING IT ON SCREEN WONDERFULLY………………THANK U…………
I’ve never wished for a top to fall so much in my life as I did in this movie.
Lee: Yeah, Ken Watanabe’s chest is admirable.
One of the worst movies I have seen in a long time. How can they synchronize the kicks so perfectly when they are not even sure when the kicks in the lower conscious will be activated? Stupid movie for a dumb crowd.
HOWEVER, thumbs up to the ending, leaves a question mark in your head. Something to think about.
@ Tomer – I don’t think of you as a “funny guy,” but damn… you come out of nowhere sometimes and make me laugh my ass off. Well played.
@ Normylous – The music is there to help them synchronize. It’s still not easy, hence them missing the one kick. The point is that this is perhaps one of the most intensely difficult and dangerous things anyone can do, and these guys have become skilled professionals at it, yet they’re STILL not 100% safe from the dangers.
Think about a burglar. How can they KNOW when security will patrol a certain area? They can’t. They can plan for it and try to work around a set schedule, but they also have to be able to improvise if security reacts differently than expected. It’s what separates the best of the best from the guys that get caught or killed early in their careers.
So what happens in the end? Is he trapped inside Fischer’s subconscious or is he back to reality and home?
We don’t know. And I kind of love that. There’s lots of reasons to think that the final scene was all part of the dream reality, in one way or another, but it’s never explicitly stated, so you’re left to wonder.
Am I the only one who wondered if their flight from Sydney to LA would be on Oceanic?
No, I did wonder that myself.
Normylous, you’re special.
Well, in this movie everyone should have their own object to find out if they are dreaming or not…The top is actually Moll’s. Cobb didn’t have one of his own, he just stole if from the fridge…so at the end of the movie, if it kept spinning…it shouldn’t mean that Cobb is dreaming, it should mean that Moll was still dreaming.
If Moll came up with the idea of a totem, why would she keep that to herself? Just because they didn’t show the totem Cobb had before taking Moll’s doesn’t mean he didn’t have one. Because if what you said is true, then the entire movie was a dream. Which kinda conflicts with the idea of only being able to achieve 3 levels through the use of sedatives, moviees.
They could only go three levels down, because they believed they could only go three levels down, because that’s what the dream was telling them.
At least, that’s the easy answer.
very nice