A visually beautiful roller coaster of inventiveness

Rating: 9/10 (27 July 2010)

Nolan may possibly be one of the best new directors to be rising into the Hollywood scene, considering he's slowly becoming a household name with the reboot of the Batman series. It's rare to find a filmmaker who brings something fresh into the scene with every movie he releases, and while he's far from perfect, Inception is his best work to date, next to his semi-independent film Momento.
Inception is a movie that comes around once in awhile that really sends you on a thrill ride of visual effects and gun fights, while simultaneously keeping you enthralled in a storyline that has been well fleshed out throughout the first and second acts, and concluded in a way that, as long as you had paid attention, leaves you fulfilled and satisfied. Unlike Dicaprio's previous film, Shutter Island, which makes you feel as if a potentially awe-inspiring story was just cut too short and given a generic, Shaymalan style twist.
Nolan's masterpiece (and yes, it is a masterpiece) is about a group of James-bond like characters who are able to infiltrate a person's dream through a specific kind of technology and steal ideas (usually in a symbolic safe and represented as paper). Leonardo Dicaprio plays the leader archetype, whose subconscious is unstable due to a past experience with his wife. Ellen Page is brought on the team to become the Architect of the dreams, and steadily becomes the voice of reason for Dicaprio's troubled character. What makes the film especially great is that there is no unnecessary, sporadic romance played off the generic Hollywood clichÃ©s that audiences will despise a movie without sex or love involved.
The ending may throw you for a loop, but you'll either make up your own decision about it's meaning or just take it as it comes. Either way, the movie is a fabulous example of intelligent blockbuster movies, and does an excellent job balancing story and character development with action and visual effects. And, by the way, the action scenes are pretty badass.
My final word to you is to see this movie, pay attention, and be amazed.