INCEPTION: a display of Chris Nolan's skills... and his limitations.

Rating: 7/10 (21 July 2010)

Something about INCEPTION kept hitting me as a re-statement of MEMENTO, with $200,000,000 to spend. The big emotional revelation is similar in more ways than one, while the bells and whistles here dwarf the neo-noir economy of Nolan's breakout indie. With every movie, the man's budgets get bigger, hey good for him, and this is by far his biggest non-Batmovie. He's grown accustomed, perhaps, to making those movies, but that now familiar style bleeds over here, (booming Hans Zimmer score check, Wally Pfister helicopter shots check,) when INCEPTION could have benefited from being weirder by a quarter. For all the possibilities a film about a dreamworld presents, it's disappointing that Nolan sticks so close to what he knows. From INSOMNIA to BATMAN BEGINS to THE PRESTIGE, Nolan puts some sort of snowbound castle in almost every movie he makes. Cue act three of INCEPTION, set in: some sort of snowbound castle. Hey, the guy likes ice! Leave him alone! But Tom Hardy skiing around this fortress picking off baddies like he's James Bond isn't exactly the stuff from which dreams are made Though it was interesting to read that in the press rounds for INCEPTION, Nolan let it slip that he'd like to direct a James Bond installment himself. Whether that's an empty promise remains to be seen, (hint: it will never happen ever,) but the finale of this film shows potential for a Nolan Bond. That is to say, it's a sequence that might have worked better in another movie.
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