Entertaining and effective

Rating: 7/10 (16 September 2010)

I thought Inception was a very entertaining, very effective movie that succeeds as a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster. Nolan works everything out nicely in visual terms, and he has a lot of good ideas -- the imaginary world that Leonardo DiCaprio and his wife invent for each other, for instance. It's no small achievement to put together a giant movie like this in a way where all the different elements come together as smoothly and enjoyably as they do here. I think you could compare it to some of Hitchcock's lighter movies, like To Catch a Thief or North by Northwest. Obviously the film can't bear the weight of some of the praise that's being piled on it: to keep up the Hitchcock comparison, you can't really call Inception a masterpiece in the same league as Vertigo. But on its own terms the film is terrific, and deserves to be appreciated as a first-class action movie.