What an idea!

Rating: 9/10 (17 July 2010)

The concept is intriguing, the direction is slick and the plot is gripping. This would adequately describe any Christopher Nolan film, be it Memento, Prestige or The Dark Knight. Inception is no exception. Nolan once again manages to stun and intrigue his audience with a roller coaster ride that dares to challenge your perceptive capabilities.
It is definitely not one of the simplest plots to understand – Technology exists to infiltrate your mind and allow other people to be a part of your dream, of course unwillingly. Simple enough? Not really. In a world where such technology does exist, there forms a thin line between a dream and reality. It is easy to get lost in this 'multi layer' film where the limits of the familiar concept of 'dreams' are tested. But the film promises to glue you to your seats and your eyes to the screen all throughout the 148 minutes.
Cobb (DiCaprio) is an expert at dream invasion and gets paid to find out peoples' secrets by accessing their dreams and conning the secret out of them. Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Ariadne (Ellen Page), Eams (Tom Hardy) and Yusuf (Dileep Rao) are his accomplices in the 'not strictly speaking, "legal"', task. They are hired by one of their own victims, Saito (Ken Watanabe), to perform the impossible – Inception, that is, deliberately planting an idea in someone's head during the dream invasion so as to make the person think that it is their own. It will make more sense during the movie.
Like any other Christopher Nolan movie, this one too has brilliant dialogues and flawless performances. DiCaprio once again proves his merit as one of the best actors in the business and Ellen Page and Joseph Gordon-Levitt don't disappoint either. German composer Hans Zimmer continues to provide some thrilling music as he did previously in The Dark Knight.
It would be foolish not to expect any twists and turns in this highly entertaining yet complex tale which explores the limits of the human subconscious. The beauty of the film is that despite the intricacy of the set up, the audience finds itself identifying with many of the concepts intimately linked with the plot. The notion of dreams within dreams and retardation of time while dreaming is something all of us may have experienced. Even the feeling of free falling during sleep or the 'kick' that wakes us up is cleverly used and deftly executed. All in all, the movie is technically brilliant, mentally stimulating, visually mesmerizing and conceptually fascinating. Watch it because a movie like this comes once in a decade.