Nolan Turns his Pipe Dream into A Reality!

Rating: 10/10 (17 March 2015)

Combining the audacity of his earlier efforts with the multi-million-dollar spectacle of his Batman blockbusters, Christopher Nolan's Inception is a movie that puts its mindless rivals to shame with its dizzying acumen and stunning visuals.
The movie takes place in the near future, where Leonardo DiCaprio's Dom Cobb steals secrets by infiltrating his victims' dreams. Saito (Ken Wantanabe) hires Cobb to pull off an infinitely more difficult mission of 'Inception', the planting of an idea into someone's (Cillian Murphy playing Robert Fischer) head in such a way that it seems to have been created naturally. If that's challenging enough, it gets even trickier. To accomplish the task, Cobb collects a team of experts: Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), his partner-in-crime, Ariadne (Ellen Page), the architect who creates the dream-world, and Eames (Tom Hardy) and Yusuf (Dileep Rao), who handle other parts of the process. The team has to penetrate a labyrinth of dreams within dreams, encountering ever more extreme hazards on every level. To say anymore would be criminal but what was mentioned above is just one layer of this absolutely enthralling plot.
As the director, Christopher Nolan manages to produce a brilliant tour-de-force. Nolan does just what the characters of Inception had set out to do - sowing the seed of a premise and concept that holds so much promise and then delivering that promise with such panache, so much so that you'll want to continue living in that world created by the cognitive senses by interpreting what's on screen, then fantasizing on it a lot more with the subconscious. Nolan juggles all of these intricate layers very prudently to make them connect. Leonardo DiCaprio as Cobb - the emotional core of the film – shows you exactly why he is lauded one of the best actors working in the industry today. The supporting roles are a tad bit less fleshed out but all the actors that make up this fine ensemble deliver terrific performances.
Inception is a lavishly deceitful thriller, dripping with layers upon layers of subconscious excavation, attempting to wrap viewers up in a heist-like adventure. It's a bold, unflinching movie of hitherto seemingly impossible technical brilliance.