Inception – The Review

Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Marion Cotillard, Pete Postlethwaite, Michael Caine, Lukas Haas
Rated PG-13 for suggestive themes, violence.

Story: Dreams aren’t even safe anymore.  Cobb and Arthur are tasked with getting inside people’s minds while they sleep to extract information and plant ideas in their minds.  They are hired by an energy executive to perform an inception on a rival company’s president; and must get a team together to go deep inside the crevices of the psyche to instill an idea that could change his very way of living.  Doing it is one thing; doing it without complications, that’s a pipe dream.

Acting/Dialogue:  You cannot deny that there is star power here.  So far, DiCaprio has yet to strike out when it comes to powerful performances and he can bring it here too.  Surprisingly enough, the focus isn’t just on him and his style, but rather the supporting roles who have this sort of "buddy-buddy” thing going on in each jump through the folds of the mind.  Page, the Architect, makes some interesting pokes to get into Cobb’s character being the only college student in the bunch.  Watanabe, the Tourist, screws the pooch early as his role suggests.  Hardy, the Forger, is obviously having fun with his role even though no humor happens to come around except for one pinnacle point in the movie before the epic climax.  Gordon-Levitt does a superb job of staying level-headed and being the foil of Cobb, just as an assistant should.  And then there’s that bitch Catillard who just wants to bring out that emotional pull seen before from DiCaprio in Titanic; and even then that was nuts.

Visuals/Cinematography/CGI: So, let’s talk about how this movie achieves mental Cirque du Soleil literally everywhere with ease.  How about those moments when everything just explodes, going from status quo to WHOA in no time.  I don’t think there was a single instance where the set had to be changed, when one location just didn’t go up.  The cinematography was quite good for a Nolan-directed film, not as impressive as The Dark Knight but still good.  The CGI was mostly saved for all of the large/set-scale destruction where everything has to go in spectacular fashion.  Fighting in a rolling hotel hallway is pretty damn cool.

Soundtrack/FX: Hans Zimmer makes an interesting soundtrack which builds upon every sequence just as he did for The Dark Knight; but that’s okay.  The moments of silence makes for some great cinematic moments to come. 

Mindgames: There’s a bunch of mind-melding mess that is simple yet complex.  Little theory to explain everything going on and even then there’s confusion as to when you’re awake and not so much.  I could also say that there is something at the end that will completely flip your shit so much it’s like a seventh season of Lost. 

Overall: Everything here is pretty much The Matrix meets Ocean’s Eleven for what it’s worth.  It’s simply mind-blowing, to overuse a phrase, absolutely astounding with the combination of great acting and a crazy idea with even wilder effects.  The ending, hell, the last ten minutes of the film will screw you over more than Shutter Island; and the probability of “it was all a dream” is VERY HIGH.  It’s pretty safe to say that this is straight up Oscar-nomination worthy. 

RATING

9.5/10