The New Matrix

Rating: 7/10 (3 December 2010)

A couple of years back i remember having a conversation with a number of my friends about The Matrix. When I announced to the group that I disliked the film I got a reaction that can only be described as icy. See to my friends the film was an untouchable masterpiece, whereas for me it was an overblown excuse to show-off new advances in CGI.
Flash forward to a recent meeting with my friends and once again that icy atmosphere is back, this time in relation to the new Christopher Nolan film, Inception. From the off i want to point out that I don't hate this film, in fact for a modern day blockbuster It was quite impressive and deserves a certain amount of respect for its ambition. It must also be noted that it has a lot more to it that the Matrix. However it still exhibits many of the flaws of the modern day blockbuster, namely the sacrifice of a consistent plot and characters for a focus on spectacle.
The premise of the film, which revolves around the exploration of people's dreams, has a lot of promise. The potential to use dreams as a way of creating a complex character study within the film was exciting, it would of been particularly interesting to have brought in elements of Psychoanalysis. It was not surprising to find that such elements were not present but it still does feel like a missed opportunity. The film instead is an action adventure following DiCaprio and a number of his partners attempting to plant an 'idea' into the head of a businessman through the manipulation of dreams.
The opening hour of the film seems to be a basic tutorial for all of those people who are not familiar with the world of Inception. Despite a small amount of character building there is very little here to reward a second viewing, it is perhaps a flaw of the premise that it takes such drawn out and frankly boring set up. A trip into DiCaprio's personally crafted dream world is the most interesting part of the build up, the questions here asked about DiCaprio's sanity add a layer of tension to the later adrenaline injected sequences that would have been sorely missed without this scene.
Perhaps the problems that lie most deep with the opening hour come in the film's second half which under minds everything before it. Here Nolan seems to get over excited with the premise, everything that was set up in the beginning seems to be forgotten or explained away, even rules about the world brought in minutes before are easily forgotten as Nolan seems to want to throw everything he can at the screen. In the end it feels as if the film is the third or fourth in the franchise, rather than dealing with the more basic facets of such a premise the film goes for the more complex. It's as if everything that can be done with the story has already been done before and the filmmakers are trying to squeeze the last out of a dead franchise.
As has been mentioned the film is not without merit. The ensemble cast is outstanding, the fact that there is no one stand out performance in the film is a testament to all of the performances and a director who consistently seems to produce such work. As has been mentioned before the film is a spectacle and in true Nolan style it is an amazing spectacle to behold.
It is of no doubt that Nolan cares about this world and wanted to create a film that was both accessible and of critical note, something which is increasingly rare in an industry that tortures us with a constant onslaught of spin-offs from the scary movie franchise. However this film is a misfire and strangely enough that may be its highest praise, for where the Matrix can be judged to be a pretentious excuse for CGI madness, Inception did at least have noble intentions.