Inception: Where Human Minds Create Wonders

Rating: 9/10 (16 July 2010)

Christopher Nolan has the penchant of playing mind games in his previous three movies: Memento (2000) , Insomnia (2002) and The Prestige (2006). Inception is Nolan's fourth production which brings mind games in the next higher level.
The story of Inception is rather original, touching on areas which many have not explore before. It is further enhanced with a group of A-listed cast, including Leonard DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy and Michael Caine. With Joseph Gordon-Levitt (of (500) Days of Summer) and TV actor Tom Hardy as the leading cast, Inception is a sci-fi thriller which is presented without much confusion due to the various characters involved in the story.
Dom Cobb (DiCaprio) is a master thief who specializes in stealing ideas from the victim's dream, when the victim is in a sub-conscious state. After the plan of stealing an idea from Japanese businessman Saito (Watanabe) fails, he was given one last chance to redeem himself: not to steal, but to implant an idea on Saito's rival, Robert Fischer Jr (Murphy). With the help of his group of specialist (Gordon-Levitt, Hardy) and the recruitment of a student Ariadne (Page), the team began their heist on the implant of ideas, which comes with enemies they had never seen, or prepared for it.
Inception is not your usual boring summer blockbuster flick which throws in loads of cliché plots and predictable endings. The concept may seen very similar, just like any other movie focusing on a heist. However, the catch is Nolan creates the story, using the background that not many filmmakers will touch on: dreams and state of consciousness. The Matrix Trilogy (2000 - 2003) had cover on dreams and consciousness, and no other movies has touched on similar issues. Now, these areas are once again, being explored and brought to a new level.
Nolan awes the audience by creating state of sub-consciousness in layers, which means a dream within a dream. Ideas in real life becomes the setting and background for a person in their dream, where what has happened in real life will determine what will happen in the dream. An example created by Nolan in this case: a person will be flooded in their dream when he/she was woken up by water in real life. This seems magical, and at the same time, logical. Thus, to enhance the thrill the audience are experiencing, Nolan creates a new level of sub-conscious state the team will be experiencing by what is happening to them, which in someway, looks like a chain reaction in different sub-conscious levels.
DiCaprio's role of Cobb is the center of the story, where his decision will affect the people around him, together with the outcome of the heist. While he is creating the most perfect crime to salvage himself, he will need to overcome the grief of the death of his wife, Mal (Cotillard), which can be his potential enemy. By implanting the role of Mal in the world of Cobb, we can see how Cobb is crippled by the thoughts of Mal, while trying to create the perfect heist.
Both issues discussed above creates the labyrinth within the movie itself, where audience are brought to a labyrinth, and they have to figure out on ways of getting themselves out. While the labyrinth is created in the movie for the team to avoid and deter the attack of unknown enemies, the audience is brought to the labyrinth, where they need to figure out what happens next. Certain form of interaction between the team and the audience exists in Inception.
Though the audience might not get much action sequence in Inception compared to Nolan's previous acclaimed production, The Dark Knight (2008), an interaction has been created for the audience, which is something that is very much lacking in the movies we are watching in cinemas today.
If the summer blockbusters playing out there fails you, go for Inception. You will have fun and you will never regret, for there is always something new for you, waiting to be explored.