Take the best parts of “The Matrix,” “The Sixth Sense,” “Fight Club,” “Memento” or any movie where things aren’t what they seem or you’re trying to figure out what’s really going on, and you have Christopher Nolan’s latest ingenious creation, “Inception.”
The plot is set in an indeterminate future or possibly the unsuspecting present.
This is the story of Mr. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a thief with a troubled past, who goes into people’s dreams and steals secrets via “extraction.” Business superpower, Mr. Saito (Ken Watanabe) wants him to do something others say cannot be done: Place an idea into someone’s head, through a believed impossible process of “inception.”
Cobb assembles a crack team of scientific commandos: architect Ariadne (Ellen Page), forging specialist Eames (Tom Hardy), chemist Yusuf (Dileep Rao), and the problem solver Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to invade the dreams of Saito’s competition, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy).
Nolan also has a strong supporting cast: Cobb’s difficult ex, Mal (Marion Cotillard), Cobb’s former mentor, Miles (Michael Caine) and Fischer’s right hand man, Peter Browning (Tom Berenger).
Hans Zimmer’s score, as always, complements the visuals and the emotional rushes throughout the film.
Christopher Nolan again proves he is as skilled a writer as he is a director (“Memento,” “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight”), with a mind-bending film that is a wild trip. You aren’t always sure where you’re going, but he gives you all the information you need–and he’ll give it to you just before you need it.
Some details are not fully explained (the machine that puts you to sleep inside a silver briefcase), but it all comes together about an hour and a half into the movie, paving the way for an exciting, nonstop, action-filled final 45 minutes that has people walking on walls, plunging from skyscrapers and defying all rules of the physical world.
“Inception” comes in at two hours and 28 minutes, but I can honestly say I never noticed the length of the film at all. The film’s cliffhanger ending, it will leave you debating in that glass half-full, half-empty kind of way. When the credits rolled for “Inception,” the audible gasp/groan from the audience was a testimony to Mr. Nolan’s achievement: He left everyone on the edge of their seat, wanting just a few more minutes of “Inception.”
