A milestone in innovation of cinematic stories, held back by subpar action sequences

Rating: 8/10 (20 November 2010)

I'm a big fan of Nolan so I watched this movie with high anticipation, and it didn't disappoint. Talking about complexity, Inception's almost on the same level as Memento was. Which being more complex and harder to be understood depends on the audience themselves, because not everyone's able to bring themselves to correctly read the fantasized ideas which work as the whole basic setting of the film.
It does have a lot to deal with dreams, subconsciousness, projections etc. However that's not what makes the whole thing standout. Nolan developed lots of his own original ideas that help make the story way more intriguing, such as the idea that time dilation takes place whenever you're dreaming and that drives your mind think faster down there than in reality, and that a dream can be dreamed within a dream; the dreamers can even achieve multiple layers of dreams and so on.
Serving as a high fantasy tale, it manages to be a great suspense drama as well. As the story unfolds deeper and deeper, there'll be like two well-arranged big twists, along with some other touching twists, all of which let us see the character development and emotional depths of some characters so it helps to understand the motivation better and makes the film itself a worthy drama with depth.
But ultimately, the film was held back by its action sequences, which are, let's say, not that memorable. There's hand-to-hand fight which aims for realism that's quite a good set piece. Apart from that, most action scenes are just plain and not fast-paced. It's kinda like the same problem with The Dark Knight, where the action scenes are just so- so too.
Anyway, it's a great film and definitely a milestone in cinema history. And any Nolan's fan or Sci-Fi fan shouldn't miss it.