An Action Film Disguised as an Intellectual film

Rating: 6/10 (6 December 2010)

Repost of my Amazon.com "Inception" review for IMDb:
While this film has many great aspects to it: The acting, special effects and a compelling topic; I couldn't help but feel overall disappointed with this film.
Despite the abundant action packed sequences, "Inception" left me bored. This is most likely due to the fact that the movie is close to nothing but 3 hours of fending off enemies that are nothing but nameless faceless "white blood cells" defending the subconscious. It just felt like it dragged on forever. That along with the fact that I felt zero attachment to the characters in the movie and an overly ridged dreamscapes made this film feel horridly sterile. Not to mention, the film felt very jumpy. As in it jumps from scene to scene to scene every few minutes. In fact, the film may have been trying to pull off a feat so grand, that it leaves you thinking its all just a big jumbled mess not worth the frustration of following. I can deal with a complex film, but I feel that the jumping around to all the scenes occurring simultaneously made the film lose focus. In other words, I watched the movie play out, but it did not pull me into it. I was a detached viewer, no emotional involvement whatsoever. On top of that, the film was honestly very predictable and had very little in the revelation department. You could always see the tracks before the train went over them so to speak. One aspect of the movie that just completely dumbfounded me was that the film managed to be both imaginative, yet uncreative at the same time. There is so much potential for creativity in a movie about dreaming, but this film decided to make the dreams seem more like virtual reality then actual dreams.
However, the biggest disappointed of this movie is the fact that everyone claimed it was an intelligent thinking mans film. This film has not exercised one bit of critical thinking in my mind. It feels overly superficial and hardly a film that can spark deep philosophical debate. After watching "Inception" it did not have me contemplating the big questions in life one bit. When it ended, it ended, and that was that.
In the end, "Inception" is not an intellectual deep thinking exercise, it is an average action film masquerading as one.
Addendum: The fact that this film has reached such a high ranking here on IMDb I think proves my fears about modern society. We are becoming overall less and less capable of creative and critical thought. "Inception" leaves absolutely nothing up to the imagination. It is complex, anally neat and almost mathematically in precision. Society these days seems to like everything spoon fed to them. In other words, as long as it doesn't require too much independent thinking and contemplation, it's a candidate for best movie ever. Don't get me wrong, "Inception" is a fine action film that is smoothly and methodically executed, but if your like me and require something with deeper meaning, emotional involvement and room to have thoughts of your own, "Inception" will leave you disappointed.