Over blown and over rated

Rating: 6/10 (4 February 2011)

Don't believe the hype on this one. Its not a bad movie and has some interesting ideas. But its not the birth of a new religion - as some would have it. How this is mentioned in the same sentence as the 'Kings Speech' is beyond me.
In general Im delighted to see any attempt to muck around with the usual narrative sequence or which mixes dream with reality. Mememto was a staggering film and I loved the Matrix 1.
But after some early promise of mind altering visuals - the majority of the film was played out in what were disappointingly normal landscapes. They reminded me of conventional bond movie sets than anything else. Where was the Escher stair case? Where was the warping of physics? I felt a little let down to be honest. It was only when we reached level four that I became a little more engaged and impressed.
The story line itself I felt badly cluttered with too many explanations of the mechanics of invading dreams. It was nearly always noisy and the dialogue often muffled. This made it hard to follow - (and yes, my hearing is fine and I have a state of the art Theatre system) But the really disappointing thing was that with a concept as subtle as invading peoples dreams and planting new ideas - we had to have gun fights all over the place. Frankly the crassness of the shoot outs clashed rather awkwardly with some intelligent ideas about the nature of reality. And why did all the baddies have 'A-team' shooting accuracy? Last point - wouldn't it have been rather easier to persuade the target to do what they needed him to - through non-dream means?