Movie Review : Inception

Author: Izarrudin
Category: Movies
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Friday
Jul 16,2010

Inception opens with a dream within a dream. Then it gets complicated. Complicated is a mild word to use here.

Writer-director Christopher Nolan is messing with our heads once more, as he did in his breakout film, Memento, and the excellent Hollywood entertainments that followed (The Prestige and the most recent Batman : The Dark Knight). This is a filmmaker who plays big, big sets, big effects and rare to most blockbusters big ideas.

The story involves a team of dream thieves, corporate spies who enter subjects’ subconscious while they are sleeping and try to pry out top secrets. As part of their scheme these “extractors” design the dreams themselves, even hiring architects, which allows for some of the surreal, jaw-dropping images we’ve been teased with in the trailers.

The team leader here is Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), an extraction specialist whose own subconscious is plagued with guilt involving his late wife (Marion Cotillard). This makes things complicated when Cobb enters someone else’s dreams and brings along his own id.

I’m not saying another word about the plot. One of the pleasures of Inception is following its characters down various rabbit holes in a dazed, Alice-like state. This is the kind of movie for which you have to mentally prepare. If you’re not ready to engage it, to be open to the possibility that a movie may make you work, you’ll be left in the dust.

The challenge is as much visual as intellectual, considering much of Inception plays like a scene from Harry Potter’s Hogwarts castle staircases. There is that mind-bending moment when a cityscape folds in on itself, for instance, as well as the sight of skyscrapers sliding into the sea. When these dreams “collapse,” things really fall apart.

DiCaprio may have the lead (in a role that’s psychologically similar to his part in the recent Shutter Island), but it’s the supporting cast that excels. Joseph-Gordon Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy and Cillian Murphy all add invaluable notes, while Cotillard outshines everyone in a performance that manages to combine malevolence with lovelorn desire.

Adding such emotion to this heady mix is only one of the tricks Nolan manages to pull. By the time Inception reaches its climax and we’ve entered dreams within dreams within dreams, and then some, you’re literally watching five movies at once.

I didn’t stay up all night trying to figure out if every last plot development panned out, because ultimately it doesn’t matter.The internal logic of Inception is sound enough to support the picture’s central theme: that clear possession of a sound mind is one of the most precious gifts a person can have. So watch it with an open mind and wide awake (hehe!)

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Official Movie Poster
Movie Review : Inception

Singapore Date: 15th July 2010
Language: English
Running Time: 148 mins
Rating: PG
Genre: Drama | Mystery | Sci-Fi | Thriller
Tagline: Your mind is the scene of the crime
Starring: Ellen Page, Michael Caine, Ken Watanabe, Tom Hardy, Leonardo DiCaprio
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Company: Warner Bros. Pictures
Singapore Distributor: Warner Bros
iZone Rating:

8/10

Official Website :
Inception

Movie Trailer