DiCaprio & Co. manipulate dreams in a visionary, futuristic crime thriller!

Rating: 10/10 (19 July 2010)

"Inception" is just brilliant. An unusual premise combined with intelligent story-telling and original writing, resulted in a fantastic science-fiction thriller with both a dramatic love story and an action-packed heist. Dreams have never been explored, defined and created in such an original way before in a film, and in a summer full of sequels and remakes, it's great to finally see a movie with brand-new and thought provoking material that is without a doubt one of the best pictures of the year so far.
Cobb is an extractor and when somebody is dreaming, he and his team will be able to access the subject's mind, find their way around it and then retrieve a specific piece of information. Together with his assistant Arthur and his architect Nash, he is working to retrieve something from the dream of Saito at the beginning of the film, but their mission fails when Saito discovers a flaw in the design of the dream and realizes that he is asleep. Cobb and Arthur are trying to escape from Japan, but Saito catches them and offers them a job, requiring them to perform the act of inception, planting an idea in somebody's mind instead of merely retrieving it. Although Arthur is strictly against it, Cobb reluctantly agrees, mainly because Saito offers him an opportunity to see his children again, who are cut off from their father in the United States. Cobb makes his way to Paris to assemble a new team for this mission, but as it turns out it maybe more difficult than anticipated to make it out alive of this mission.
No synopsis could ever do justice to the complex plot of this film, and the story depends on so many little factors that you simply have to see the film to completely understand it. "Inception" is complicated, yes, but if you can keep your brain sharp for the entire 2 1/2 hours, you are almost guaranteed to leave the movie theatre immensely satisfied with what you have just witnessed. The film may be complex, but at no point in this movie I was confused, and that says a lot about the way this film tries to explain its premise to the audience. You can try to compare this film with others, such as "The Matrix", but ultimately it's in a category all by itself, and could best be defined as a futuristic crime-thriller. Of course, the entire concept of accessing and manipulating dreams has to be explained to the baffled audience at first, before the big coup of planting an idea can take place, a part mostly filled out by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. He has to fill in Ellen Paige's character Ariadne, and his explanations sounded so scientific, that I had no trouble believing that such a deed could be possible.
The film also succeeds, because it cleverly balances an emotional love story, with numerous scenes of action, but still hardly ever slows down. Not a single moment seems to be wasted in this film, and I was captivated by the slowly untangling history between DiCaprio's character and his wife that was very reminiscent of a big puzzle, with small pieces being added throughout the film, but the complete picture only offered itself to the viewers at the end. Christopher Nolan truly shows his ability as a director through the perfectly choreographed action scenes, and the film already opens in high gears, with a great shooting scene. Once again, there is a lot happening in the first 15 minutes, and for a while you won't realize what is going on, but the art of this film is that everything seems to make sense sooner or later. There are several more chase scenes and even more shootings, but without a doubt the best action scene in this film, quite possibly one of the best ones ever shot for a film, involves Joseph Gordon-Levitt fighting off two thugs in the corridor of a hotel room with shifting and eventually no gravity at all.
I still can't believe that the young guy from "Titanic", turned out to be such a great actor, and even makes a convincing hero in an action film. Leonardo DiCaprio, against all odds, became a real badass in his film projects, and "Inception" is bound to give him his fourth Oscar nomination, and possibly his first win. He is fantastic, both as the leader of the team trying to plant the idea, and the tortured husband, who is haunted by the demons of his wife's death. There will definitely be several discussions about which actors with gather an Oscar nomination, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is certainly a good candidate, if only for the beautiful action sequence without gravity. There is not much revealed about his character, but he has great charisma, and is really the only one who brings a few humorous moments into this film. Marion Cotillard, who is in high demand since "La Vie en Rose" three years ago, is at her very best as Cobb's deceased wife, who still haunts him in his dreams. The rest of Cobb's team consists of Ellen Page as Adriane, who does a great job, especially in her interactions with DiCaprio, Tom Hardy as the cynical Forgerer Eames, and Dileep Rao as the Chemist Yusuf. Ken Watanabe, who has a great authoritative presence, plays Saito, who seems to be a villain, but eventually turns out to be an honorable businessman, and Cillian Murphy plays the man who is supposed to have the idea planted in his head, who will inherit his father's entire business, despite him being disappointed with his son.
Inception is a movie highlight of the year 2010, and through its fresh concept will certainly be a candidate for the big trophy at next year's Oscars. Now, I just hope that nobody will attempt to make a sequel of this film and that Christopher Nolan will put just as much creativity into his next film, the third "Batman" movie.