Dark Night of the Subconscious Soul

Rating: 6/10 (17 July 2010)

Whilst Christopher Nolan's Inception is superior in almost all respects to his previous film, The Dark Knight, it's still a portentous, pretentious concept in search of a story. Whilst that concept is a clever one, the film is (as are all Nolan features) seriously over-plotted and far too long, with one-dimensional cardboard characters slotted into position to help prove the director's point about the malleability of reality.
It's impossible to give a damn about any of the people involved, and the 'corporate espionage' angle generates little more than a shrug of disinterest. Who cares whether or not some fictional corporation gets broken up or not? Leonardo diCaprio does his best to bring some emotional weight to the table, but Nolan's screenplay doesn't have much room for genuine feeling. There are good performances by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy, but Ellen Page is atrocious (how long can the woman-in-the-body of a thirteen-year old girl schtick work?), whilst Marion Cottilard is little better. And whoever came up with the idea of using Edith Piaf's Non je ne Regrette Rien as a triggering device should have been fired. Of course, it was probably Mr. Nolan himself.
Inception is not a complete waste of time, and it's nice to see a summer blockbuster rely less on explosions and more on matters of the heart and mind, but it's far from a must-see.