Visually, a little flat; good plot construction and not predictable

Rating: 6/10 (17 July 2010)

Inception, about the business of invading dreams and stealing secrets, is overbaked, complicated, and tough to endure in spots. It's crippled by overexplaining itself and by changing the rules it sets out for itself when convenient to the plot. Still, a strong supporting cast (behind the vapid Leonardo Dicaprio) helps considerably.
Dicaprio plays Cobb, a man whose job it is to invade people's dreams and steal their secrets. (It stands to reason that he's also The Very Best at this.) Cobb operates outside of the United States because of a terrible incident in his past, and he's been looking for a way back without facing any negative consequences. A Mr. Saito (Ken Watanabe) has a job for him, with a proposal: if Cobb is successful, Saito will have his longstanding charges dropped with the proverbial one phone call. But, of course, there's a catch: rather than having Cobb steal an idea from their victim, Saito wants him to plant one, an act known as "inception," an act that is deemed nigh near impossible to accomplish.
Cobb assembles his team: his partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the architect Ariadne (Ellen Page), the forger Eames (Tom Hardy), the chemist Yusuf (Dileep Rao). Their mission: enter the dream of the heir of a major corporation and plant the idea that he wants to strike out on his own rather than take over the company when his nearly dead dad kicks the bucket.
As with most Christopher Nolan movies, this one takes some careful scrutiny. It's not that the plot is convoluted, precisely, it's more that there's not only a lot of things going on in rapid-fire motion, and the entire movie is set against the backdrop of an area that virtually no one knows anything about: dreams. Because of the unfamiliar territory, the filmmakers can do almost anything they want within the movie, within the dream within the movie, and within the dreams within the dream, and so on.
Nolan establishes some rules from the start, because his audience naturally would have no idea what they might be (for example, if you die in a dream, you wake up; in order to come out before the dream is up without dying, you need to fall somehow). Then, over the next couple of hours, he violates those rules a few times. In other words, the rules are X, but because of this situation in which we now find ourselves, all bets are off. It's kind of easy to write your way out of plot predicaments when you can change the rules at any time and for any reason.
This is an issue that plagued Dicaprio's last movie, Shutter Island, a movie that depended on the audience being able to suspend disbelief. That's crucial here as well, but the nature of what we're supposed to disbelieve keeps changing. It's tough to completely respect a movie that needs to move its own goalposts.
The cast isn't terrible, but it's largely lost under a sea of story intricacies, wild CGI, and a lot of blaring music. This is a minor complaint, honestly, but there were multiple scenes in which characters were speaking to one another in normal tones while the movie's soundtrack was ratcheted up to 11, thus rendering the dialog completely indecipherable. For a movie that's so highly dependent on plot, this was irritating and really inexcusable.
But back to the cast. Both Gordon-Levitt and Page seemed out of place, in way over their heads. Gordon-Levitt's character probably should have been played by someone more skillful, like Mark Ruffalo or James Franco; Page looked like she just wandered onto the set of another of her Comcast commercials, and she's not yet been able to shed her Juno MacGuff persona. Page, like the rest of the cast, is game but is ultimately along for the ride, nothing more. Also on hand is Marion Cotillard as Cobb's dead wife who appears to him in dreams as sort of a projection, and that's where the weirdness begins; he's defensively locked his memory of her in his subconscious, so of course she pops up every time he goes into someone else's dream. That can be a bit of a drag.
I'm still firmly in the camp that believes Leonardo Dicaprio often confuses earnestness with good acting. (I might be the only person in this camp, but the smores are to die for.) I know there are plenty of people who think he's the bee's knees when it comes to passionate performances, but I just feel like he's stretching further than he can reach as an actor. He seems sincere here, yes, but not entirely believable in the role. For some reason, I think a more burned-out- looking actor would have been better, even Jeff Bridges – despite the age difference – because he would lend a lot of gravitas to a pretty demanding role.
As always, I was amazed and impressed by the imagination of Christopher Nolan (who also scripted), but I was largely disappointed by the movie, particularly its denouement. There's much to see and soak in, and it's true that overthinking the movie will lead you to really dislike it (or stare at it, mouth agape), but often it's just too much seriousness and not enough awe and wonder.