Outstanding 21st Century Sci - Fi Thriller

Rating: 10/10 (29 July 2010)

A brilliant film, and Director Christopher Nolan's best to date. Once in a while a good original idea, an intelligent script, and a fine cast come together. "Inception" is one of those occasions. Any story that takes two and a half hours to tell on screen had better be good – and this is. The basic premise is fairly straight forwards. A mind invasion expert, Cobb, played by De Capprio, is hired to persuade the heir to a global conglomerate to break up the Corporation by a business rival .In return that rival promises that his influence will ensure that charges against Cobb in the US will be dropped.
The opening act is disorientating as reality and dream are introduced to the viewer non-sequentially. Although the narrative does not initially make sense, the action is compelling enough. Then slowly the plot unfolds in a device that Nolan first explore in "Memento". Gradually the story makes sense via a young student, Ariadne, played by Ellen Page, who is hired to assist in the project .Yet just as we are getting to grips with a "mind theft" plot a parallel plot emerges. That of Cobb's deceased wife, and the part he had to play in her death.
Essentially, Nolan is playing with a device popularised in Shakespeare's "Hamlet". The play within the play, and he has a lot of fun with it. The opportunity it presents for non-linear action and narrative is exploited to the full, especially as he chooses to introduce the concept of three levels of dreaming. As a consequence, the viewer is forced to pay attention, simultaneously trying to make sense of the on screen action whilst reflecting how action in our own dreams works.
There is little to find fault with. Pete Postlethwaite and Michael Caine relish minor roles and Marion Cotillard exudes mystery and beauty as Cobbs' wife. The myriad "dream within dream" sequences provide multiple mini-action climaxes which do disrupt a conventional film narrative, yet the ending is a good old fashioned device of keeping the audience guessing.The handling of illusion and reality will delight "Matrix" fans, whilst a shoot-out at a snowy mountain hideaway is pure Bond circa "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". So whilst Nolan explores the cerebral dimensions of the plot in a way that would have delighted Stanley Kubrik, he also relishes an action sequence as much as Jerry Bruckheimer.
Easily amongst the best films of the 21st Century and destined to be a classic.