Dreams within dreams

Rating: 10/10 (15 April 2011)

Often when one is told that a film is amazing it is a disappointment even if it is a decent film; that isn't the case here though; for me this film really did live up to the hype! Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, a man who goes into other people's dreams to steal their secrets. One day a man approaches him with a far more difficult proposition; he wants an idea planted in the mind of a business rival; an idea the man must think was his own. Cobb is initially less than keen to do the job but the man has promise that he can arrange for him to get home to his children; something he can't currently do because he is suspected of killing his wife. To do the job he must assemble a team and take his target into a dream designed my new recruit Ariadne. This is no ordinary dream though; it requires the team to enter a dream within a dream within a dream! It is complicated further by the facts that his dead wife haunts Cobb and that if any of them die in the dream they will be trapped in a limbo.
Director Christopher Nolan ably demonstrates that a big blockbuster film doesn't need to be in 3D these days nor does it need to be devoid of complicated ideas to succeed. DiCaprio did a fine job as Cobb and it was nice to see the excellent Ellen Page playing somebody who wasn't still a schoolgirl! While this film was about ideas that doesn't mean it wasn't full of spectacular special effects; while many of them were clearly computer generated they looked real enough to enable the viewer to suspend their disbelief in a way that often isn't possible. The idea of dreams within dreams could have been very confusing but each dream was very different so the viewer doesn't forget which layer of the dream is which once the action begins. If you have being putting off watching this film because you have been put off by the hype don't worry and watch it now; it is great.