Terribly overrated.

Rating: 4/10 (3 June 2011)

*MAJOR SPOILER ALERT* The biggest problem with Inception was that I had no incentive to care about any of the characters or what happened to them. Other then built in pathos (dead wife guilt issues? Check. Daddy issues? Check? Missing your family? Check) there was no real drama or tension to the piece. At the end I really didn't think for more than 2 seconds about whether the totem tipped or not. Because it made no difference one way or the other. I was in no way invested in Leo's character.
Another disturbing part of the film for me was the notion that even given the damage caused by Leo's character's first use of inception (on his wife) he was perfectly willing to do it again. I found all of the characters morally repugnant and was rooting for them to fail. Problematic as well is the attempt by the film maker to introduce stakes for actions only to immediately blot them out. At one point someone asks Leo if killing the baddies is damaging the psyche of the subject. A simple "no" suffices and it is never brought up again. For what reason was it even brought up then?
The film also doesn't bear up to scrutiny. The world of Inception didn't play by its own rules and as a result all the wind came out of the film's sails. During the van chase there was tension, if they crash they will be kicked out of the deeper layers. Then the van DOES crash (with lots of rolling/tipping) and this isn't a kick? It took all the tension out of later scenes. Also when the target gets shot, which up to that point was presented as lights out Leo spouts one line of expository dialogue and everything isn't kaput? We aren't very far from Captain Kirk suggesting a tachyon pulse.
The most glaring fault, however, was that despite how it was couched in terms of psychology and mental representation, the producers and director clearly had the Sparknotes on Freud and the publishers blurb on Lacan. Even an action-schlock genre film like Avatar had more psychological content than this "thriller." Inception is a bloated mass of CGI and MacGuffins with nothing to say and nothing for me to care about.