Nolan's Ego

Rating: 1/10 (23 July 2010)

The title pretty much sums the movie up. An absolutely amazing cast and incredible premise was almost wholly pushed to the margin by special effects and "action". My hopes were too high. Nolan was clearly out of his depth as far as intellect goes and totally blew the chance to pull off an epic, unprecedented dream heist flick.
Dear Nolan, if you're reading this: You can give guns, grenade launchers and C4 to a cast of unknown actors, place them virtually anywhere and have them destroy everything in sight for two hours, and it would have been just as good as this movie.
Thanks for ripping me off by luring me in with an allure that promised slick corporate spies engaged in mind games in surreal settings and instead taking it from a promising half-way point into a senseless visceral joyride that was quite literally the cinematic equivalent of van Gogh painting Starry Night then taking a bowie to it and slashing it to ribbons before the paint has a chance to dry.
It's painfully clear that you wrote the script to allow you to stroke your ego with the most over-the-top action flick you could cook up. With the money you spent on all the great actors you employed for this, you could have hired a dozen great writers to develop a script that would have actually been worthy of their talent. You sir, simply WASTED it. I actually feel embarrassed for Michael Caine. That such a fine actor was dragged into this crap is sad. You could have just flashed a still photograph of his face for a few frames and it would have sufficed since you don't pause for even a second to develop ANY of the characters except for Cobb and anyone with half a brain was probably wondering WHY character development was so scant in a film that deals so heavily with the subconscious mind. No, I guess a car chase was more important.
It's entirely beyond me why you tainted your ego-stroking action flick with a genuinely thought-provoking premise when all the "smart parts" flew over the heads of your target audience by a wide berth.
tl;dr version: shallow, pseudointellectualist excuse for making an obscene, self-gratifying action flick. I hope to god you get your money's worth if you actually pay to see this garbage.