Good movie but not great

Rating: 10/10 (18 July 2010)

Every once in a while, a movie comes out that you feel will be completely original and great but come out with a stale feeling that it did not live out to its potential.
Inception is a good movie, a large part of it felt like a roller-coaster and the story moved so fast that you had to focus a lot on the what was going on to not get lost. This is something that is usually not bad but mostly because you feel that the ending will answer a lot of questions or may at least leave you with a final thought that will keep you all giddy inside. Unfortunately, Inception does not leave you with that thought, even though the ending presents an unanswered question, its not a question that really needs an answer.
Watching Leonardo DiCaprio act is always a pleasure, he is a great actor and slowly becoming one of my all time favourites. The other main actors are also always great, Gordon-Levitt, Watanabe, Ellen Page, all capable of being lead actors, and have shown they can be before, not to forget Michael Caine who can so easily do a supporting role that I don't even think he needs to read scripts anymore. However, none of their characters are given any room for development, they are all one-dimensional and you don't care about them one bit when the movie ends. The only character who could have died in the movie and would have disturbed me would have been Ellen Page, and that's only because she looks so innocent. Cotillard was good and had more room for development, but, still, not enough. I don't even remember their names in the movie, its to that point.
The plot of the movie presents such a great premise, but, is so poorly developed that it just yields a high-budget heist / redemption movie. With a 5-10 minute introduction to the world and 30 minutes of character development rather than gun-fighting, this movie could have easily been an 8. Yet, to make it a real masterpiece, we would have needed that special ending. That ending that left you with, "OH yes, you got me, you got me good", remember "The Usual Suspects" and the unraveling of the genius, well, we don't get that here.
Now, I still gave it a 7, because the movie kept me interested enough throughout and even as I was noticing the flaws, the next scene would make me forget. Also, the originality of the concept of dreams is pretty fresh and similar ambitions to the matrix, without physics defying stunts, just imaginative architecture. It was indeed very similar to Shutter Island and thus, it was bizarre watching a character further develop in a complete separate movie. So, I was tempted to give it a 6, but, compared to the other disappointments of late, I felt more generous.
Overall, its worth the watch, for the special effects and ambition, but not worth all the praise. Nolan is a good director, but he has lost the ability to wrap up stories well and is incapable of developing more that one character in a film. In the dark knight, only the joker was well developed or given room to grow, in memento, guy pierce was the key focus and in this one, we only feel for Leonardo's character, the others, as good performances as they provided, are not at all given the room to blossom. So, plot 6, performances 6, effects 8, ambition 8 = average of 7