That is not how imagination works

Rating: 6/10 (19 March 2013)

Good points. Well, the visuals were great that's for sure. The way they bent reality and had rooms spin and cities shift and stuff blow up, sure, great action. The soundtrack is good as well but it doesn't have any memorable tunes.
Bad points. What the hell was that action all about? Projections of someone's mind were typical people attacking the incerptors. Am I to believe that the ultimate defense a person's mind has is... faceless mooks? Where are the dragons, the supermen, the giant robots? Something that is NOT faceless mooks? If this is the realm of dreams then it should be filled with such stuff, there is no holding back. Not even the most pragmatic mind would be without such stuff. So here I am watching an hour long action scene that is better fit for a James Bond film (minus the rotating rooms) than an adventure in the subconscious mind of troubled men. Makes little sense.
Then the dialogues. Although the explanations around how the inception works were great and I did understand the concept, I found that it took a huge chunk of the duration. Half of the dialogues feel like the characters are indirectly explaining the theory to us. Something that they wouldn't since they are supposed to know such stuff and have no need to mention them.
Good point. The story is indeed interesting and offers a concept around the blurring of reality that has never been offered exactly like this before.
Bad point. The actual plot outside the interesting concept is mostly thrown away at shoot outs and explosions with random mooks that have nothing to do with a person's mind. If I dream something, I am the dream. Everyone is me, everyone acts like me, everything reacts like me. Yet the movie wants us to think our dream is like reality. I was not convinced that a dreamworld is so stiff. It was changing all right but the moment someone knows he is dreaming and doesn't wake up, he doesn't need to run or hide. He can mold everything where he stands and play it God. Thus the movie doesn't literally show how dreams work. It just gives you some nice ideas and wastes the rest in action scenes you can find even in a normal action movie.
Acting... no good or bad points here. There are no prevailing characters for all I care. The idea and the action overshadow the actors. Di Caprio and the gang did their parts well but I still find it hard to believe that such an unstable personality that has his murderous wife chasing him in dreams would be allowed to go on in such delicate missions. It's like inviting Freddy Krugger to chop you to pieces while the world hangs at the edge of the cliff. Bad plot element.
So is this movie good? In theory, yes. Action lovers and eggheads will love it. Scriptwritters may get some nice ideas from. But as far as I care it is NOT a masterpiece. It has too many convenient events, too much holding back, too much infodump, too much out-of place action.
Things that I would change to make this movie better: -No shootings with faceless mooks and blowing stuff just for the heck of it. -More dream morphing scenes in places of fore-mentioned pointless action. -Less infodump. -Less corny dead wife drama. We have Solaris for that.
The Cage is a movie doing a rather better portrait of a man's dreamworld. Not so much mambo jumbo around how it works but shows it better. And of course there is Solaris (dead wife thing) and Matrix (cool action) and James Bond (shooting and blowing stuff) to take out most other good parts of the movie. By the end of it, only the idea of inception is what stands out. And it wasn't exploited that much really.