A Brilliant concept with a playing it safe execution.

Rating: 9/10 (22 July 2010)

Overrated! That's what I thought it was.
A Brilliant concept with a playing it safe execution. Not taking anything away from Christopher Nolan who has done a great job directing it but the movie didn't seem to push the envelope for me. It could have been so much more but it chose to be a simpler version to make it more profitable (I assume) in the sense that by making the movie less complicated, they ensured that the movie goers were enthralled by the ride they were taken on while it almost managed to stay logical to most of them.
Making someone else believe the idea in their head is theirs is something you can do without getting into the persons dream. But in Inception, dreams are used as the doorway to manipulate the mind, to plant thoughts or reveal secrets. The concept of a dream in a dream in a dream was like pealing an onion, one layer at a time. Watching that was magical in its own mental way.
With such a head scratching, mind boggling concept; the cast seems to have taken somewhat of a back seat. There was no stand out performance; all of them played their parts to mechanical precision. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, the almost know it all with a haunted past that revolves around his dead wife, Mal (played by Marion Cotillard). He seemed to have sleep walked through most of the movie, it almost felt like a controlled performance with few sparks of brilliance here and there. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy and the rest of the supporting actors rallied well around him with over shadowing each other.
Christopher Nolan is now being called a genius behind the camera which I somewhat agree with. This might not be a brilliant movie I was expecting it to be but whatever that was created was well executed and spectacularly delivered. He has managed to make a complicated concept look interesting without making it boring which is a tough thing to do.
The visual effects were smartly and creatively done while the action sequences were unique and the process by which they intertwined with each other was refreshing to see. The cinematography was stunningly done complimenting the action flawlessly and the music score was just outstanding. All of this together makes the movie an exhilarating experience that tops anything I've seen this year by a long shot.