Inception Review

Posted by J.D. Dunn on 07.17.2010

"Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together." (Anais Nin)



D: Christopher Nolan
W: Christopher Nolan

Leonardo DiCaprio.......Cobb
Joseph Gordon-Levitt....Arthur
Ellen Page..................Ariadne
Tom Hardy..................Eames
Ken Watanabe............Saito
Cillian Murphy.............Robert Fischer Jr.

It's amazing to watch Christopher Nolan become the filmmaker that M. Night Shyamalan was supposed to be. If Nolan isn't already in your top five regular directors, he should be. He first burst onto the mainstream scene with the gimmicky thriller Memento before hitting it big with the reboot of the Batman franchise, Batman Begins. His brilliant The Dark Knight transcended its comic-book roots to become a cinematic masterpiece. Inception allows us to see a master craftsman at work without the confines of gimmick or expectation.

To describe the plot of Inception is to do it a disservice, but briefly: Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an expert "extractor," a corporate spy who steals secrets from the minds of wealthy businessmen (Ken Watanabe) for profit. Of course, he's also haunted by a past he cannot (or, more appropriately, will not) escape from. He's aided in these efforts by Arthur (the ever-watchable Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and extractor-in-training Ariadne (Ellen Page). When a powerful businessman offers to wipe out charges against Cobb and let him return to America in exchange for a dangerous mission, Cobb reluctantly accepts. That's when the fun really begins.

All of this may sound a bit like the 1984 Dennis Quaid thriller Dreamscape, and there are certainly shared elements. Like Quentin Tarantino, Nolan nakedly wears his influences on his sleeve, but unlike Tarantino, who absorbed a steady diet of 1970s schlock and awful, Nolan doesn't shy away from nods to his contemporaries. As with The Dark Knight, the look and feel of the film is straight-up Michael Mann. The glossy, high-contrast darks and lovely orange city lights recall Heat and Collateral.

And, like Shyamalan, Nolan prefers an Impressionistic style of storytelling, allowing us only glimpses into each scene instead of going from point A to point B. He even cuts characters off in mid-dialogue, knowing that the viewer will finish their thoughts for them. The result is, appropriately, dreamlike, jumping from point to point rather than following a linear path. Even the Wachowski Bros. get a nod during a mind-blowing hallway fight sequence that bounces among all four walls of the room (not to mention the floor and ceiling!)

The performances are excellent, but with this cast, that's not surprising. True to Nolan's directorial inspiration, DiCaprio's Cobb seems like a character right out of a Michael Mann film, always serious and on-point. At first, it looked like the affable Levitt might be miscast, considering these are supposed to be bad-ass, all-business dreamweavers, but anyone who has seen the unheralded indie noir "Brick" knows he can do "edgy." Tom Hardy ("RocknRolla") steals the show as the wisecracking "forger" Eames, however. The lone weak spot seems to be Ellen Page, whose dry-wit delivery is wasted here. Even then, it's not a matter of her turning in a bad performance; it's just one that any actress could have done.

Of course, in the end, it's all about story, and Nolan more than delivers a fresh take on an old concept. The final act is like watching someone play one of those multi-tiered chess games - your mind has to be focused on three levels at once. The one knock is that Nolan the director allows Nolan the screenwriter too much exposition about Cobb's wife (Marion Cotillard), dragging out the running time to an almost unmanageable 148 minutes. It's a minor complaint, though, in the face of Nolan's brilliant assemblage of sound, visuals and stunts.

The 411: Many think that Christopher Nolan is the filmmaker of the last decade, and with films like "Inception" it's hard to argue. This is a director who has not only done his homework on the classics, but he incorporates those ideas without it feeling like empty navel-gazing for the film school crowd. "Iron Man 2" might be more of a 'rollicking good time,' but "Inception" is the best film so far this year, and it's one that will require multiple viewings to unweave the tapestry that Nolan has woven. Or you can just come back for the bad-ass hallway fight.

Final Score:  9.0   [  Amazing ]