Reviews & Previews - Inception

Posted on Sunday, August 08, 2010 at 06:00 PM

Inception

By: S. Tran

Starring: Leonardo Dicaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Rated: PG-13
Running Time: 148 Minutes

Ohhhh....huh?

Nolan's latest film has the Batman director bringing us what has been hailed as one of the most intelligent science fiction films of the last bazillion years. So, if you are too dumb to understand the entire thing too bad. However, you can join me as part of the head scratching group of cave men who didn't quite get this entertaining but ultimately confusing monolith.

DiCaprio is Cobb, a corporate spy who steals secrets for giant corporations from their rivals. The kicker is that he does this by creating dream worlds for the target and then stealing secrets from their subconscious. Aiding him is his partner Gordon-Levitt, who is surprisingly effective and manages to lose the boyishness of his past few roles.

Cobb's real troubles begin when he is hired by Saito (Ken Watanabe) who wants Cobb to attempt an inception, which involves planting an idea into the subject instead of trying to steal an idea. We are told that this is magnitudes of order more difficult than simply creating an entire dream world.

Of course to do this Cobb has to assemble a team and the movie goes into A-Team mode where we see him going around the world collecting the best people he can find. Page shows up as Adriadne, some kind of uber genius who Cobb needs to create the dream worlds for the subject. I could probably write five pages trying to describe more of the plot but to be honest I don't think it would be all that helpful. Inception is one of those films you need to see for yourself to fully understand, or in my case, almost understand what is going on.

While the central premise of the story is very interesting, the last third of the film slowly starts to unravel. As Nolan's story becomes more complicated and layered (literally) it becomes that much more difficult to keep up with the pseudo-scientific babble that is the foundation of the film. Without the luxury of rewinding certain parts I found myself unsure of whether elements in the film were actually explained fully and I missed them or if there was a hole in the plot somewhere. I suspect it was a little bit of both.

Another problem for me is that the movie requires you to pay such close attention to what is happening that you almost forget about the characters driving the action. It sounds strange but its almost a situation where you can't see the forest because of the trees. At some points Cobb and his crew were only important to me because of the information they could provide about the plan and how the dreams actually worked.

The movie is worth seeing despite all of this. There is a reason that it was the number one movie for several weeks in a row, which hardly happens anymore. Nolan is a great director. The film looks great and I can't find much fault in any of the actors who all put in good performances. At the end of the day you're going to enjoy this film even if you're not quite sure what you just saw exactly.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

S. Tran also writes at Cracked.com, Gunaxin.com and Uproxx.com