Nolan's worst film. A great caper movie morphs into a terrible action flick.

Rating: 6/10 (31 May 2012)

As Christopher Nolan's budgets get bigger, his movies get worse. He is an excellent director when he is given a project that isn't overly ambitious. With his more "epic", "blockbuster" films though, he shows a lot more weaknesses. Nothing illustrates those weaknesses more than Inception. It is a movie that starts off at the same level as Memento, but declines and hits rock bottom on the same level as the recent Transformers movies. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the last 45 minutes or so of the movie is that bad. It is nothing but the same loud, poorly shot, poorly choreographed, and boring action that has spread throughout movies nowadays like a disease.
For at least the first hour, I could see why this movie got such great reviews. It presents itself initially as a dark and surreal Ocean's Eleven. The first act is spent acquainting us with the rules of dream thievery while the main character, Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), assembles his "safecracking" team. In typical caper movie fashion, he finds the specialists that he needs, all of whom have their own talents and personalities. There is the chemist who will whip up the special cocktail needed to sedate everyone for this special job. There the dream actor who can impersonate anyone. There is the financier who hired Cobb and wants to come along to monitor his investment. There is the architect responsible for building the dreamscapes in which the "safecrackers" will pull off their caper. The target of this scheme is Robert Fischer (Cilian Murphy), the sole heir to a huge corporate empire. The purpose of this scheme is not to steal anything, but to implant the idea into Fischer's head that he should break up his father's empire. To do that, Cobb and his buddies concoct an incredibly complex scheme that involves a dream within a dream within a dream.
For a while, I thought that I was in heaven. But then, in Act II when the caper officially starts, I began to feel doubts. Within minutes, there is a massive car chase and the bullets are flying from all directions. When the dreaming starts, you get a taste of what the rest of the movie is going to be like. Tons and tons of shooting, chases, and action that drags on and on despite having almost no relevance to the plot. It's bad in the dream, it's pretty bad in the dream within a dream, and Holy Jesus, is it ever awful in the dream within a dream within a dream.
As the movie progresses, the action becomes more pointless and the action scenes become progressively harder to follow. Dozens of guys who dress like Secret Service agents are gunned down or karate chopped to death. Approximately a half hour is one gigantic non-stop action scene that takes place across all of the dream levels. While the idea of a half hour of non-stop action might sound nice, it drags horribly. Almost no plot development takes place this entire time. There is a shot of a van slowly falling towards the water. Across the long action scene, that van is shown about five or six times. By the time that you are done with this movie, you will be sick to death of seeing that stupid van falling towards the water.
Why is it that this movie can't make gunfire and car chases exciting? For starters, the action is very poorly choreographed. You get no sense of location. The challenges that the good guys are facing aren't clearly laid out. Who is where? How many bad guys are there? What you do get is good old shaky-cam, loads of CGI, Matrix-inspired floating, and close-ups of dudes shooting guns. In other words, you get the crap that has virtually destroyed action movies nowadays. Today's directors could learn a lot from action classics like Commando and Die Hard.
Speaking of CGI, this movie also has tons of that, and it is technologically impressive, but mostly pointless. The one scene that everybody seems to rave about is the Paris scene where half of the city gets folded in over itself. Eh – whatever. It looks cool, but – who cares? When did this become part of having a great movie? And why is it that the Road Warrior and the original Star Wars still look cooler to me than modern movies with five times the budget?
While I enjoyed most of the non-action parts, this also is probably Nolan's most pretentious movie. The movie starts with the line "What is the most resilient parasite?" The answer: "an idea". What is this twaddle? Ideas aren't like parasites. I'm constantly seeing ideas brought up, shot down, and forgotten about. And why do you need to tell me this – to look smart? Inception is constantly throwing new dream rules at you, and by the end they are a confusing mess. It is these kinds of problems that inspire people to criticize Inception as being a dumb movie that tries to position itself as a smart one.
To sum it all up, I think that Inception, in 20 years, will not be viewed by Christopher Nolan fans as one of his best. In fact, I believe that it is his worst film. This guy cannot do good action, and when he has a budget to spend, it seems to just make the movie longer and prettier, but not better. From these criticisms, you might get the impression that I hated the movie. I didn't. Even during the most boring scenes, I wanted the whole scheme to work, and I cared about Dom Cobb enough to be hoping that he would triumph in the end. I did enjoy it enough to watch the movie a second time, just to see if I would like it better. I had the same feelings again – falling in love at first, only to be disappointed in the end.