Inception? No, implementation.

Rating: 7/10 (23 January 2011)

"What's the most resilient parasite? An idea. A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules. Which is why I have to steal it." That is the motto of "Inception". It is a very intriguing idea in itself, but one which the film only goes superficially to explore. To cover for this superficiality, the plot is given a superficially complex guise, but actually it's pretty straightforward.
Leonardo DiCaprio and his team invade people's dreams to steal information from their subconscious. However, their new mission in "Inception" is not to steal information, bur rather to "plant" it, therefore causing the inception of a new idea in the target's subconscious. To do this, they form dreams within dreams (which in the film actually work as three separate dreams rather than actual dreams within dreams), therefore accessing a more vulnerable form of the target's subconscious.
For some reason (which the film doesn't adequately explain) within the dream there is a symbol of the subconscious motive (say, a safe) whereas you can find the desired information, or whereas you can plant the desired information. But there's a catch. If for some reason you "die" in a dream within a dream, you remain in subconscious limbo (which again is not adequately explained) which nevertheless can resemble a form of reality in itself.
Amidst all that, Christopher Nolan makes an action film, with car chases, gunshots etc etc.
Here is the thing with Nolan. As a director he only offers intrigue. He approaches an ambitious idea, touches the surface of it, but then hesitates to proceed any further, and reverts to the action film prototype. Furthermore, he has done it so many times already, that even the action segments look pompous and clichéd (too much reliance on editing and warping of real time).
This is a confused film, which tries to hide it's inadequacies in a needlessly confusing plot.
Once again with a Nolan film, ambiguity prevails. When DiCaprio and his wife are stuck in subconscious limbo, the wife "locks" the idea of doubting an objective reality, and throws away the key. DiCaprio invades her subconscious and replants the idea, thus when they re-enter real life the idea remains. But the idea was there in the first place, wasn't it? The sub-plot with Robert Fischer is stated in such a way so that it impresses with it's artificial "complexity" (in the first "layer" of dream, DiCaprio's team plant seeds of doubt; in the second layer of dream they direct Fischer into facing this doubt; and in the third layer of dream he faces it, duh), but it is suggested that the seeds of Fischer's discomfort were already rooted in real life, with DiCaprio's team merely fast-forwarding them (hence ambiguity again). The icing on the cake is we never learn whether DiCaprio has returned to real life or not (ambiguity).
What a mess. The only thing this multiple dream architecture serves is that it spices up what is essentially a simple plot: that somebody enters someone's dream in order to plant an idea. That's all there is to it.
As it is, ambiguity characterizes Christopher Nolan very nicely, as he seems eternally torn between the commercial action film and.. something else (without that "something else" ever taking shape). Nolan must stop hinting at a grander scope and actually embrace it.