A dense, superbly made, mind-bending masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (17 July 2010)

Christopher Nolan has been a hot name in Hollywood for the past five years and rightfully so. He revived a dead in the water Batman franchise with two fantastic genre transcending films and also delivered a strong character driven revenge story with The Prestige. But Inception marks his first truly original story in a decade, one that took almost a decade for him to craft. With his streak of strong stories at stake, Nolan meets and exceeds the expectations his previous films have set.
Inception is difficult to sum up entirely. The plot works something like this: Cobb and his associate Arthur work as Extractors. They enter the mind of a person through their dreams in order to extract information. When they botch a job and prepare to run, they are instead offered something different: inception, the planting of an idea into someone's mind. This is far more difficult and after assembling a team for such a task, they venture into the man's mind in order to plant the seed of an idea deep in his subconscious.
This is obviously not a film for someone who just goes to the theatre to see explosions and hear one liners. The story is dense, as the team needs to venture into highly complex dreams within dreams in order for the idea to take. Because of this, there are events co-occurring on different levels (and within different speeds of time) and these varying levels can be challenging to follow for those not paying attention. At one point, the team is three levels deep within the dream world, meaning events are occurring on four levels. But somehow Nolan makes it possible to follow.
Another strength of the movie is it's cast. Leonardo DiCaprio gives his usual strong performance as Cobb, a man who has a bad past with entering dreams but continues to do it because he is the best. Joseph Gordon-Levitt works quite well as Cobb's partner and Ellen Page gives another great performance. Both of those two have big things in their futures. Cillian Murphy is strong in his slightly supporting role of the man whose dreams are entered and Ken Watanabe is great as the man who originates the idea to incept. In whole, there isn't really a weak member of this cast.
Although this is a very dense story, there is some very interesting action included, at least enough to break up the more talkative parts of the movie. The special effects are also top notch but don't appear enough to take away from the narrative. As the movie is mostly character driven (particularly around Cobb's past), these elements aren't as necessary to the story but are both strong none the less.
This movie was not made for anyone. Some people may find it too dense and layered for their liking while others will complain that you don't really take anything away when it's done. But there are so many levels to examine that the inability to find something interesting is impossible. This is a film that warrants multiple viewings in order to truly embrace every aspect of the story and for some, this is too much of a chore. But if you are the kind of person that likes a deep, layered movie that will require your attention to follow and comprehend, then Inception is the type of film made for you.