Steven Seagal+PhD+LSD = Inception

Rating: 8/10 (12 January 2011)

Inception is takes the process of psychoanalysis and turns it into a visually spectacular, emotionally engaging and thought provoking action movie. If Steven Seagal got a PhD and then took LSD, it would be a little something like this film.
In a world where the technology exists to enter the dreams of another person, the world of corporate espionage has moved into the imagination. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an "extractor", a man skilled in stepping into someone else's dreams and stealing their secrets. He is also an exile, forced to leave behind his country and his two children. A Japanese industrialist (Ken Watanabe) comes to Cobb with an offer. He asks Cobb for "inception", to enter the dreams of another person and plant an idea so deeply and securely in their subconscious that it alters their very being. If Cobb can do it and cause a competitor (Cillian Murphy) to dissolve his corporation, the Japanese industrialist will have Cobb's exile lifted and allow him to return home.
Cobb assembles a team for the mission. There's Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Cobb's button down right hand man to organize things. A "forger" (Tom Hardy) who can change his appearance in dreams. A chemist (Dileep Rao) to concoct the sedatives to keep them asleep and dreaming. And a young woman named Ariadne (Ellen Page) who will serve as the architect of the dreamworld they will all enter, an unreal land of thought that will be filled with the subconscious projections of their target. But Ariadne learns something the rest of the team does not. The dreamworld will also be filled with the subconscious rage, guilt and self-hatred of Cobb, represented by the malevolent and destructive image of his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard). If Cobb cannot find a way to control his uncontrollable mind, he might doom them all.
Inception is an excellent motion picture that succeeds as entertainment and as something more than that. With precise and measured performances, amazing special effects, explosive violence and a plot that functions on multiple levels of conflict, this is the rare big summer movie that doesn't disappoint.
And despite what some may say, this isn't a difficult film to understand if you pay attention. Writer/director Christopher Nolan wants the audience to come along with him on this epic voyage and is careful to explain everything the viewer needs to know, which is also the one area of possible criticism of Inception. There is an awful lot of blunt exposition in the story, almost all of it coming from the words and deeds of Ariadne. She may be the architect within the storyline, but the character's true function is to tell the audience what's happened, what's happening and what's going to happen next. And it does get a little intrusive by the end of the movie because she does it so damn often.
There's a bit too much to explain with Inception. Much as the Harvey Dent/Two-Face plot line was an additional boxcar on the end of the locomotive that was The Dark Knight, really not adding anything to the tale except making it longer, there're a few things in Inception that could and probably should have been pared down or away. It's all nice stuff to look at and think about but it's like eating too much chocolate cake. As much as you enjoy it, it's really better for you to stop before you're bursting at the seams. Considering how little most movies give you, it's somewhat ungrateful to complain about a surplus of sensation and conceptionbut there it is.
Inception is probably the best made and most engrossing film of this year, many years in the past and many more to come. This is a must see.