Smart action flick with a hell a lot of inspiration

Rating: 9/10 (30 January 2011)

Director Christopher Nolan manages to create an illusion of an original work just as the characters in the film create an illusion of an original world. First of all the basic concept of planting an idea into another person's mind is just the opposite of erasing a memory from a person's mind which we have already seen in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Then the concept of creating a dream world where the senses we trust to distinguish reality from illusion cannot actually be trusted has already been showcased in The Matrix where a similar world is created by electrical signals emitted into the brain when people are connected to a device known as 'the matrix'(it's based on a theory called Cartesian Skepticism). Then the portions of the characters in the dream being created by one person's imagination is a direct lift off of a Twilight Zone episode named Shadow Play which concerns a man trapped in a recurring nightmare in which he dreams he is a prison inmate sentenced to death and to be executed; he tries to convince the characters in his dream that they are only figments of his imagination and that they will cease to exist if the execution is carried out. And the end portion in which Di Caprio faces the danger of being trapped inside the dream state because of his own "dream projections" is quite similar to Richard Linklater's Waking Life which revolves around a man being aware of having been trapped inside his own dream. But all said and done Nolan does create an edge of the seat thriller and what the audience wants 'the summer blockbuster'.