[ back ]
Movie Review:
(by Dedra Cordle, staff writer - July 22, 2010)
In a summer movie season plagued with lameness, “Inception” is a dream come true.
Simply put, “Inception” is the best movie I have seen all year.
This Christopher Nolan product is a trippy, complex, original, and utterly fascinating movie that I have to see again. And again. And maybe one, or five, more times. Soon. As in by the time this paper is delivered, I may have watched it 10 times. To me, it’s that good.
“Inception” takes place in a world where people have the power to invade dreams – literally. One of the best in this particular brand of thievery is Cobb (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), who is known as an extractor. His job as an extractor is to enter another person’s mind through a dream and steal their ideas or well-kept secrets. At first, Cobb works with two other people: Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the point man who is responsible for researching the team’s mark, and Nash (Lukas Haas), the architect who is in charge of constructing the world of the dream.
During the first mission we see them on, things go awry when their mark, Saito (Ken Watanabe), realizes that his subconscious is being attacked because of an interior decorating lapse from Nash. Instead of being outraged at his mind invasion, Saito is more upset that the well-renowned trio failed. What the trio didn’t know was that they were contracted by Saito himself to see if they could pull off the mind heist. He had high hopes for the team, but alas, decorating details got the best of them.
Before fleeing the country, Saito has a proposition for the team; accomplish inception and Cobb will get his life back. You see, in the world of dream invasion, inception is the hardest, and rarest, thing that can be done. Inception entails entering the subconscious mind and planting new thoughts or ideas into the target, who later accepts them as their own ideas. In this case, Saito wants the team to break into the mind of Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy), an heir to a multi-billion dollar energy providing business, and plant the idea of dismantling his father’s empire.
With this more intrusive and dangerous mission, they have to include additional players. There’s Yusuf (Dileep Rao), the chemist whose supplies them with the drug that will take them to the multi-level dream state; Eames (Tom Hardy), the forger who can shift his identity inside a dream; and Ariadne (Ellen Page), the new architect. This character is very intriguing, especially after reading some theories. (Yeah, I know. I’m totally geeking out over this movie.)
Inception is dangerous, and the team is met with dangers as soon as they enter Robert’s subconscious. (His subconscious is trained to eliminate extractors.) There’s the freight train that smashes into them, the car chases, the shoot-outs, and the mysterious figure from Cobb’s past that keeps manifesting itself in the dreamscape beyond his control. (It’s part of the whole “getting his life back” thing.)
The action sequences and the cinematography wows with these slow-motion shots that are juxtaposed with frantic ones, and the zero gravity scenes…oh my. Goodness abounds throughout this movie, but especially when they are in the dream, within a dream, within another dream.
I know “Inception” is not going to be for everyone. It’s not one of those movies you can just watch; you have to invest in it. Judging from the time I have logged on the Internet reading theories, I definitely have invested in this movie.
It’s hard to tell if they’re in a dream, in the reality, if they are overlapping, what’s true, what’s projection…it’s just surreal, exciting, different, and is just what I needed to see after months of lazy sequels and bad movies. Woohoo “Inception”!
Grade: A
Dedra Cordle is a Messenger staff writer.
[ back ]
