Lost in its own complexities

Rating: 5/10 (23 March 2011)

A visual Tour De Force that gets lost in its own complex world, Inception stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Dom Cobb; a rogue 'extractor' who steals elements of dreams and sells them to the highest bidder, all in the name of corporate espionage. But things start to go drastically wrong when Cobb takes on a seemingly impossible job and his dead wife turns up to make trouble.
Ingenious but convoluted, Inception may not be to everyone's taste – but it is undoubtedly a Chris Nolan picture; the same man who gave us Memento, The Prestige and of course, The Dark Knight. The problem is that for all the slick visuals and clever narrative structures, we end up with something cold, clinical and frustratingly diffuse.
Why Inception falters, and I appreciate that I may be in the minority, is that for such a surreal and imaginative concept to work, it requires an equally surreal and imaginative mind, and Nolan is just too conservative and too technical for the content. It might have made a more interesting film had it been directed by P.T Anderson or, dare I say it, Terry Gilliam.