Moviegoers, time to exercise your brain after eating many many junk food movies by checking out a one-of-a-kind experience, Inception. Out of all the films this year where you leave your brain out and just have fun, this one requires you to have them on all the time. This is a puzzle film with the budget of a Michael Bay blockbuster and only done well and tight. Taking a break before taking on the helm of the giant follow-up to the cosmically-praised The Dark Knight and Batman Begins (I hope he is), Christopher Nolan goes back to his roots in delivering calculating and mind-riveting pieces like his previous films, Following and Memento.
Wrap this around your brain. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are the best at extracting secret and confidential information from people's dream for their clients by diving into their minds and create scenarios that allows the target to fill them with their secrets. This attracts the attention of a Japanese businessman (Ken Watanabe), who offers the team a job. In exchange for Cobb's crimes to be cleared and to be reunited with his children, Cobb has performed an act of inception on his target, a son of a rival energy business, where he doesn't steal an idea, but to plant an idea that will cause a reaction outside of the dream world. Soon the mission proved to be not so easy when the team realize the deadly stakes they are in and how the subconscious of Cobb's dead wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) keeps interfering with their mission as well as his entire life.
I will say one thing though. Whether you find yourself loving or you don't, you'll still come out the theater and think nothing but the movie for a good long day and have long discussions with your friends in wrapping around this giant puzzle of the movie. The movie is treated like a game for the audience, which is in a way, needed for the movie to work. The first 20 minutes of the film lays out the rules and glossary of the dream-world and the profession Cobb is known for, before you get on right into the game that is the Inception mission. And thankfully, the game of the film doesn't get out of hand by not having the entire concept going down too deep, meaning the film stays straight and doesn't get too complex and ridiculous. Like the layers of the dreams, the plot, the concept and even some of the characters have layers and each are executed greatly with care.
The smart thing about the film is it doesn't lack in pace and always grabs the audience's attention. There are many mind-blowing visual marvels to look at, it even rivals the visuals of Avatar. Hell I would say its better-looking. Not to mention the action-sequences are very inventive and engaging and it blows the mind of how many could happen at once. The cinematography is once again breathtaking and the soundtrack is definitely epic-feeling done by long-time collaborators of Chris Nolan: Wally Pfister and Hans Zimmer respectively.
Leonardo DiCaprio has started to look like a older man now instead of looking like a young boy as he was in most of his films and he was just amazing. Probably the actors that shined the most were Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page and Tom Hardy. Jospeh was great, being the reliable and sharp partner, with Ellen being new and in awe of the new profession she has got into and Hardy being just a badass and just as witty and cool like James Bond himself. And like Nolan's last film, The Dark Knight, the entire cast has brought their A game and none brought the film down. Some may complain that there is not much development in most of the characters and it depends on how you view it. To me, the film needs to sacrifice some of the character developments in favor for the complex puzzle-like story and DiCaprio's character and emotional journey that are considered more important. The supporting characters may not get some developments and have some arcs, but at least they were left wasted and have important things to do in the storyline. The only character development that is important is Cobb's, in which the Inception mission is serves as his own moral realization/journey of his guilt and act against his wife he loves so much.
Not in any way a perfect film and certainly not his greatest masterpiece (The Dark Knight will always be perfect and his greatest masterpiece...yet), but is still considered one of the best films of the year, being on the same page as Memento and The Prestige. For some audience, it may be too smart for them and it is alot to take in. This film does require alot of thinking and alot attention. But the film doesn't insult or be pretentious for the mainstream audience and allows them to have fun in solving this puzzle game. And this is a step forward in bringing some intelligence back into the film industry that can bring casual audience to acknowledge "2001: A Space Odyssey" instead of "Marmaduke" and "Twilight"....
4 and a half out of 5 stars
Now Christopher Nolan, onto his BIGGEST and MOST AMBITIOUS of ALL.... BATMAN 3!!!
