is it a dream, is it a nightmare, actually it's a bit of both (This really contains spoilers, don't read if not seen!)

Rating: 8/10 (31 July 2010)

Cobb is an extractor, one of an elite group of people who are hired to go into people's subconscious' and steal their deepest secrets through their dreams. Simple enough, right? ...wrong! On their first mission in the film Cobb and the team mess up and they fail to get the very information they need, however, the mark who they try to extract from was impressed by their skills and offers Cobb and his team a job, not of extraction, but inception, the planting of an idea rather than it's removal, while some say it can't be done, others around Cobb, say it can. With the carrot dangling in front of Cobb of returning to America and seeing his children (something he cannot do) Cobb and his crew decide to take on this, hopefully, last job and return to the US rich and free, by creating a dream, within a dream, within a dream, but, of course, certain things do not go to plan.
So, is Inception better than Dark Knight, everyone asks that like it's a tough question and yet it wouldn't be difficult not to be really. the grand idea's of dreams and reality, what is real or not is not bent to fit a genre like they were for Dark Knight, resulting in characters that had little to do with the origins on the page. Here the characters and ideas come straight from Nolan and he shows here, like he did in Memento he is often better when he does that (Although that said I am a fan of Batman Begins) DiCaprio shows here again just what a damn fine actor he is becoming and the film hangs on his ability to make Cobb so brilliant, yet hiding a truly disturbing flaw, that sucks us into the movie, almost perfectly (I'll get back to that later), support in Gordon-Levitt as Arthur is excellent and provides a serious practicality to proceedings as one of those who controls the dreams that they enter, Marion Cotillard is as good as she's ever been previously as Cobb's late wife who can't let go of Cobb's subconscious, with Tom Hardy and Tom Beringer being excellent in their more diminutive roles, the usual Nolan Stalwarts of Caine and Murphy also provide their usual skilled selves to proceedings. The direction is for the most part brilliant and assured as the pacey script lets Nolan show his ample talent for story-telling, although the direction on the snow action is tough as you don't know who or what is where sometimes.
So, great enjoyment, right? Well yes. One of the best films ever ...er, well no. Sadly the film has its Persian flaw and that is that it is too clever for its own good. I found myself looking for clues to see if this was a dream constructed by Cobb, as his wife suggested, or reality as he suggested and 2 clues stood out a mile to prevent me enjoying the piece as much as I might if that was not on my mind (Cobb never has his own anchor in reality, instead carrying his wife's indicating he does not have an anchor on reality, also the dream timescale the chemist speaks of doesn't work unless you're already at least one layer down) and because I was always looking for the dream within a dream I couldn't let myself go and get sucked in and fooled the way I have with other films. If you read other reviews here many are either yes it's a masterpiece enthusiasm or no it's just awful, it's like these reviews are written by Spock or Kirk, with reality being somewhere in between.
It is a good movie, it's not the best movie ever, and in my opinion Mon is actually the hero trying to save Cobb (the villain) from the prison that is his own mind.