Not as good as it thinks it is.

Rating: 7/10 (20 July 2010)

Don't get me wrong. I am a big Christopher Nolan fan and would say that if anything lays down his genius it is Memento, but it is not Inception. True, the visuals are stunning, but today we can be very blasé about special effects because they come cheaply. I would have liked to see more of the flavour of being in a dream like the movie The Cell achieved (poor movie, great visuals), but there were two elements where Inception really fell down for me.
The first was that things were just TOO far fetched. I am happy to believe that we are several layers down in someone's dream-scape, that road bend and bridges create as you walk across them, all of that, but that a couch-potato chemist can suddenly drive like a secret service special agent whilst avoiding dozens of gun-toting trained security forces? It was too far and snapped me out of the film, and there were other instances too, you'll know if you saw the film.
The second was the lack of suspense when traversing the layers. It's been done before, most notably by The Matrix, and I didn't realise how well it was done there until Inception completely failed at communicating the tension between what's happening in one world and how it affects another.
Other than that the script is good, not too wordy (unlike The Matrix), the action is certainly driven and the cast all well chosen (except for Joseph Gordon-Levitt).
I assume the huge IMDb rating is because of the hype and because people haven't seen it twice yet. the film moves fast enough to make you miss the holes.