Where's the imagination?

Rating: 6/10 (26 November 2013)

There's a lot to like about this film, and even more about the potential. The concept is so good. The cast is fine, writer/director is capable and there's also a big budget. You get to think, you get to feel and you get a little mystery too.
...but in the end I was somewhat disappointed. After all, this is a movie about dreams. In dreams, everything can happen. What a perfect opportunity to give us a wondrous world full of different, exciting implications. So why did we get tired gunfights? Did "Inception" really warrant a snowmobile action scene? No, it didn't. And considering that Nolan isn't exactly the best director for action scenes, it's not that engaging. Often I felt like I was watching a video game. And in movies like this, videogames are the last things I want to be reminded of.
When imagination is used, I'm all in. I like those few scenes, I like all the possibilities and that certain wondrous element this movie sometimes presents us. There were some good ideas, others were just quickly touched and that was it. When imagination is not used, much of the potential goes down the drain and old bastards like me get tired. When imagination is not used, there's a lot of things happening at once to distract the viewer (me) from how shallow the movie often is.
It's not all just about imagination (or lack of it) though, there's also drama. DiCaprio and Cotillard serve as a very qualified backbone to the drama arc. I loved their moments together and their little mystery, and I hoped there would've been more of it. It's not all wasted, but there was potential for more. Especially when the main plot or the main objective of the group is about corporations, and you can't get more non-personal, distanced and less emotionally involved than that. Nolan's focus was on things I didn't care about instead of other way around.
Hardy, Page and Gordon-Levitt are...they're just there either for exposition or some action scenes. I won't say they're wasted on this film, but they just weren't interesting as characters. They could've easily been replaced with less known actors and the movie would've been just the same.
This isn't a bad movie. As I said, there's lot to like. But I can't help but feel disappointed over the potential this movie had. Even the ambiguous ending felt forced and lazy. Sometimes it works (check out "Kill list"), in this case I just felt cheated. It certainly feels like this movie is highly overrated, but "everything Nolan does must be genius" is the popular opinion nowadays. Inception is far from genius and far from a masterpiece, but a worthy movie nevertheless.