"Inception" is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle that doesn't have a lot of pieces; it takes no time at all and in fact there are characters there who tell you how to figure it out. On the surface, I would say I enjoyed myself at "Inception", but I think it failed to be what it set out to be.
"Inception" is the brain child of Christopher Nolan, who probably was able to do whatever he wanted to do after the success of "The Dark Knight". This film has apparently been in Nolan's mind for ten years as he struggled to write it. I can certainly understand why it would take so long, the film is perfectly constructed in a way all planned out, Nolan has created his own world with his own set of rules, things like that must take time.
The story is about a group thieves, who's specialty is to steal ideas or secrets from the subconscious of someone while they are in a dream state. The team works as sort of a "Mission Impossible" science fiction type. The master of this type of thievery is Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), who has his own deep dark secrets. Cobb is approached by an entrepreneur named Saito (Ken Wantanabe), who gives him an opportunity of one last job. This job consists of stealing from a young Oil Company heir named Robert Fischer (Cilian Murphy) who is inherting the company from his dying father.
The trick to stealing from Fischer is in fact a little trickier, it involves inception, which means planting an idea inside someone's subconscious without letting them know about it. Cobb gets together his crack team which includes his right hand man Joseph Gordon-Levitt, master of disguise Tom Hardy, and the architecture of the dream Ellen Page. Page actually has the toughest part as she must design a dream within someone elses mind without them knowing it's a fake.
"Inception" has a lot of great things going for it, it has an ingenious plot device that could go places, but it actually goes nowhere. Fisher's must've had James Bond or Michael Mann movies on the brain because that's pretty much what his mind is made up of. Nolan's fatal error was making his dream world have a rule system, it's all very simple to follow as long as there are rules. But do dreams have rules? I know mine don't. A few nights ago, I had a dream about a lion who was hiding in an ice cream truck, and ice cream vendors who had no idea where it was, only I could see it, I kept trying to warn them, but they just kept giving me ice cream; wouldn't it be fun if DiCaprio and his cohorts had invaded that dream?
The film does stop for some surreal moments, mostly when we get to see Page walk around with DiCaprio with her new found power to create a dream world. Perhaps the one image found on trailers for the movie is when Page takes a city street and folds it on top of the other, that is a fantastic image.
Mostly thought, I found the film to be more of an action movie, and less of a altered state science fiction, it was humourless and joyless, it didn't feel as though anyone was having any fun. DiCaprio for one has perhaps done one too many of these serious roles, he seems determined to make the guilt-ridden, brooding character to be his career now, I'd love for him to lighten up a bit, maybe crack a smile once in awhile.
For the most part, the performances work, particularly by Ellen Page who is sort of the audiences way into this world, she keeps it leveled down, and she's always sweet no matter what she does. Marion Cotillard also makes the most of a thankless role; she doesn't get to play a character, but an idea of a character within DiCaprio's mind, but she's still able to find emotion and pathos within it.
To me "Inception" is a bit of a cold movie, Nolan has a lot of intriguing ideas, I jsut wish he had expanded more on it, the climactic action sequence becomes epic and unstoppabloe, and that's where I think it should've stayed, it's a perfectly agreeable action film and Nolan knows how to turn on the juice when he needs to. Next time I hope he can think outside the box he created for himself.
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