Good Thriller Over the Top

Rating: 8/10 (21 July 2010)

To make a long story short, I am not really sure how it all came together or how we got there, but we ended up on a double-date at Inception (Joey mentioned our last double date here). The typical hype that surrounds each new mind-bending thriller had made me pretty excited to see the latest pairing of Nolan and DiCaprio. The last time DiCaprio paired with a first class director (see Shutter Island review here) I was very impressed, so my expectations for this one were very high.
The movie throws your right into the action and confusion. The first couple of scenes begin as a dream within a dream and quickly alert the audience that they will have to pay attention to all that is said. The story reminds me of the Matrix insomuch as it centers around questions of reality and consciousness. The imaginative creativity that expresses itself in the creation of entire cities and bends physical boundaries is the most compelling aspect of the movie. It drives the plot and allows for some impressive visual effects (still kind of wish I saw it in IMAX).
Overall the acting was satisfactory. Headliner DiCaprio's character in many ways mimics his portrayal of Teddy Daniels in Shutter Island. While the east coast accent is gone, the fact that he (SPOILER ALERT) sometimes struggles with defining reality and is haunted by his suicidal wife makes his characters nearly identical. I was pleasantly surprised by Tom Hardy who played Eames (the witty quick talking forger of dreams). He brings a suave demeanor and eccentricity that bring his character into a reality (another terrible pun). Ellen Page was good but nothing to write home about and Joseph Gordon-Levitt was the winner of best actor whose career has been defined by a baseball movie. He starred in Angels in the Outfield and beat out Tom Berenger who was Jake Owens in Major League (in all seriousness his performance is pretty good and he had one of my favorite lines of the whole film when he steals a kiss from one of his co-stars.
All in all, the movie borders on the edge of confusion for confusion's sake. The plans were well discussed and therefore explained to the audience until an added layer of complexity in the last half an hour of the plot. The story skillfully incorporates common knowledge about dreams and weaves (third bad pun) it into the details behind dream-sharing technology. An example is how each layer of the dream causes the dream to occur in less time in reality. This allows for building of anticipation as one layer of the dream reaches its culmination and the others to continue on leaving the audience hanging. The plot is intriguing and the idea of stealing valuable information through dreams has to make you wonder.
The last quarter of this one kept it from being a great movie. Don't get me wrong , it was still really good. But towards the end, I was feeling tired, my head was spinning, and I felt disoriented. But then again the easiest way to tell if you are in a dream is whether or not you can remember how you got there. I thought the end of the movie was a cop out, then again, since I can't remember how I got there, maybe I'm just dreaming.
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