The Reality Is That A Dream Is Reality While You're Dreaming It

Rating: 4/10 (30 January 2011)

The reality is that my summary basically sums up this movie. It has you questioning reality all the way through; in some ways similar to The Matrix, I suppose, although it's more obvious in this movie that there's questioning about reality to be done. This movie, however, lacks the philosophical/religious elements that The Matrix had, and stands as a pretty formulaic action type movie with the issues about reality thrown in.
Essentially, this movie takes place within a dream - or within dreams to be more precise. That's the catch. Leonardo DiCaprio as Cobb plays a man who has somehow figured out not only how to get into people's dreams but how to link various people into the same dream, so that the dream becomes reality. Some tragedy has befallen Cobb as a result of this, which is finally revealed, but it does take a while. Cobb and his team are hired by a Japanese businessman who wants them to get inside the dreams of one of his corporate rivals to convince him to break his company up, thus eliminating the rivalry. The move goes from there.
It's a confusing movie. There aren't just two layers to it - reality and dream. There are actually multiple layers of various kinds of reality, as characters can enter into dreams within dreams, each successive layer becoming more and more removed from what reality really is - if you get the point. It's imaginative, but it is confusing as you try to sort the layers out. In all honesty, it's not a movie that especially appealed to me. DiCaprio's performance was good but nothing more and there were some really good special effects included in this. Aside from the dream inside a dream inside a dream gimmick, though, this stacks up as an action movie among action movies, and I didn't find it an especially noteworthy addition to the genre. A friend told me it's the sort of movie you have to watch 2 or 3 times to really get your head around it. I think I have a reasonable enough attention span, and if I can't get my head around a movie on the first watching, then it's unlikely I'm going to go back to it again.
I will say that this is the sort of movie that's tailor made to produce sequels. The very last scene leaves everything wide open to continue exploring whether or not Cobb is actually back in reality. (Remember, the top was still spinning on the table as the last scene faded out.) The possibilities for sequels are virtually limitless. Everything is based on a dream or dreams. You could have anything from comedy to action to historical epic to outer space adventure and it would all make sense, because it's all a dream or dreams! Still, while I can have some appreciation for the ingenuity of the writers to come up with a story that has the potential to literally go on forever, I didn't find enough here to make me want to look at the inevitable sequels.