Your mind is the scene of crime?

Rating: 8/10 (19 August 2014)

Nolan attained cult status in Hollywood owing to his master screenplay and narrative in movies like Memento(2002). And his vision of the Batman series was a spectacle that both the fans and non-fans of the series' enjoyed alike. Now Nolan through his imagination has brought us a journey into the world of imagination itself. Inception is about the world of the dream and how to hack into your dreams as well as others.
Central to the plot is a piece of tech, developed by the army, which enables people to share dreams. This is what Cobb(Dicaprio) and his associates use to commit mental heists. Cobb lands a job that needs him, not to steal an idea from someone's mind, but to place one there instead and make it seem self-generated by the subject himself. You can do that? This has never been done before but Cobb needs to do this to get back to his children.
This movie is not of the sit-back, relax and enjoy genre. It is fast paced and does not wait for you to understand what just happened. Unless you are totally alert, you will get lost. You have to keep track of dreams within dreams and it is not abundantly clear how things actually work in the dream world.
But the ten years that Nolan has supposedly put into the film definitely paid off. He masterfully communicates his vision with the audience. The plot has a lot of gaps which the viewer himself has to fill to make the narrative congruent. So this is definitely going to stay on your mind for a while even after you leave the theater.
The movie is visually stunning. The CG is seamless and top notch. All the actors render laudable performances. My favorite definitely though is Eames(Tom Hardy). He is a professional thief and an expert forger and extremely cool.
But Nolan is no expert at directing fight scenes. They do tend to wear you out as they are not very exciting in themselves. The movie definitely has quite a number of inconsistencies too. This surely must have been due to the short window of time in which Nolan had to present everything about this new world from conception to conclusion.
All in all this is a must watch for people who want to challenge their intellect. And as I've said before this not for one's with a faint heart as you might find yourself bored or completely confused unless you are extremely alert.