Awesome storytelling, but bland underneath all the glitter

Rating: 7/10 (18 August 2010)

Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is the best at what he does. And that's dream extraction. In a new form of commercial espionage Cobb is hired to steal out memories and secrets from within the dreamworld of hapless victims. There to assist him is Arthur (the brilliant and highly underrated Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Unfortunately one of the jobs goes awry and after unsuccessfully trying to steal blueprints from the mind of Saito (Ken Watanabe) they are forced to hide away from a backlash of their employers. Saito offers a way out - help him plant an inception (an idea) into the mind of Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the inheritor of a vast commercial empire. In return he offers a dream come true - a chance for Cobb to return to the States and rejoin his children.
Since inception is much harder (deemed impossible by some) than extraction Cobb and Arthur have to mold together a new team: Ariadne (a very ordinary and forgettable Ellen Page) as an architect, builder of dreamworlds, Eames (Tom Hardy) as a thief, master of dream disguise and Yusuf (Dileep Rao) as the chemist, narcotics expert responsible for forcing people into a dream-state.
I am quite amazed at the ranking of this movie making it one of the top films in movie history. Just goes to show how easy people torpedo a movie right to the top of rankings, if it offers something more than a normal blockbuster Michael Bay roller-coaster. Not to say that this movie isn't brilliant on many levels and it is exceptionally well told. In this aspiration to being a perfect movie things go wrong for Christopher Nolan - it loses it's human soul and feels like a noirish action movie devoid of emotion.
First of all the world itself is too perfect. Unlike the visions in Ubiq by Phillip K. Dick (surprisingly similar storyline and I believe Nolan really should have made a shout out to Dick for the inspiration) the dreamworld is too pristine and controlled. It could be understood that the dreamworld is put in order by the architect, but apart from one sequence near the end when we are in Cobb's dream it never really feels unreal, surreal or ueberreal. Ergo it never really feels like a dream. The main culprit is Nolan himself who puts too many rules into the game, whilst it is quite obvious that dreams have no rules.
In such a clear and collected environment the magic that rules in your subconscious dissipates. The story surmises that you can even calculate the flow of time in a dream, which is absurd given how messed up everything is in a real dream. I especially found it awkward, when Cobb states that when weird stuff happens in a dream your subconscious becomes aware of this and reacts by fighting off the source of 'weirdness' (like white cells). In my dreams it is entirely the opposite - weird and illogical are what define dreams and only after you awake do you actually start grasping that what you dreamt was wacky and out of place.
I couldn't help but feel that Christopher Nolan set up all the rules of the game and made it very logical, even organised, just so he could have a catchy story and some cool action sequences (mainly including Arthur). The problem was that the whole movie tried too hard at organising the dreamworld, but put almost no focus at all to make it actually feel like a dream (for examples of how it is done I suggest "The Beyond" by Lucio Fulci).
What's worse is that Nolan fails to follow his own overly meticulous logic. We are told at one point that Arthur has two minutes left in his level of the dream. Within these two minutes he manages to have a fight, go downstairs, take explosives off the ceiling, go upstairs, tie 5 people together and push them about 100 metres to a lift, set explosives beneath the lift and than settle down to blow them up in two sequences. Oh! And he does this in a no gravity environment which makes running impossible. I absolutely despise it when someone sets up a motion of time only to ignore it when push comes to shove.
Acting is top-notch, but the movie seemed to lack true emotion. Apart from one or two scenes "Inception" packed no emotional wallop whatsoever, which given the story is quite a feat in itself. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a grownup tough-guy well, but I never really felt his emotional involvement with other characters and in truth he seemed disinterested with actually seeing his kids or his wife. I never really believed that he is the type of person, that would risk everything to be back home with his kids. The movie is also too cool for its own good and almost plays out like a "Matrix" wannabee movie.
I must also point out the absolutely appalling characterisation of Saito. In several scenes he was made up to be an old guy, but looked just ridiculous - like a flashback from bad 80s horror movies. Surprising that with such a budget and good overall look of the movie something as bad as this managed to creep through.
All in all a very good roller-coaster ride with terrific dialogue and some nice performances (I loved Kan Watanabe and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who both stole DiCaprio's thunder). Nonetheless once you scrape of the surface not much left to behold and you can be left deeply wanting. A good summer blockbuster action movie, who tries to pretend to be more intelligent than it actually is.
By the way: All the best sequences "Inception" has to offer were shown in the trailer.