Inception Movie Review

Inception stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Dom Cobb, a highly trained and skilled thief who, along with his partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), enters the minds and dreams of people and steals thoughts and information. As the movie starts, we find Dom and Arthur in the mind of a powerful businessman named Saito (Ken Watanabe) trying to steal an invaluable document. Saito must have been impressed with their work because he decides to hire the duo to perform a different type of crime. He wants Dom and Arthur to enter the mind of billionaire Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy) and plant a concept in his mind that Fischer will believe is his own idea. The idea? To give up the power he has just inherited in his father’s multinational corporation. Dom and Arthur team up with another mind-manipulator named Eames (Tom Hardy), an expert chemist named Yusuf (Dileep Rao) and a brilliant architecture student named Ariadne (Ellen Page). With this team, Dom plans to enter the mind of Fischer Jr. and create a maze within layers of dreams where he will plant the plan for Fischer to give up control of the company. The whole process has never been successfully done before. The process is called Inception.
Inception is the latest in a long line of simply outstanding movies from director Christopher Nolan. Whether it be Memento, The Prestige or the two Batman movies, it seems that he cannot miss. Nolan certainly ranks as one of the top directors and storytellers working in Hollywood today. It is Nolan’s ability to tell an exceptional tale that separates him from other great directors like James Cameron, who made a great movie in Avatar but did not tell a great story. Nolan tells stories that are not for the faint of mind. Inception is one of those stories. It is a unique story brilliantly wrapped up in a very intense action film with fabulous special effects. Inception is a movie from which you cannot take away your eyes, not even for a second. If you do, have fun catching up. The movie just does not stop. Running at nearly 2 1/2 hours, chances are you will not even realize how long you have been sitting in your seat. It’s a multi-layered movie that just keeps coming at you and messing with your mind, much in the same way that Dom and his crew play with their victims’ minds. The world that exists inside people’s heads, according to Mr. Nolan, is itself worth the
price of admission.
Many critics are ranking Inception as the best movie of the year. Others I have read have ranked it as one of the best movies of all-time. I agree that it is an absolutely superb cinematic experience. However, I do want to see the movie one more time to completely understand it. It tends to be confusing at times, but in a good way, if that’s possible. I have also read that this is DiCaprio’s best performance ever. That’s a pretty big statement too, considering how great he has been in so many movies. I would say he’s neither better nor worse than what we have come to expect of him.
If there’s one complaint that I would have about Inception it’s the fact that the movie is a bit shallow in character development. The story goes very deep into the DiCaprio character and that makes sense considering he is the focal point of the movie. As for everyone else, we only get fed very superficial information about them. It doesn’t take away from the movie in any way and I’m not too sure how we could have been given anymore information than we already received in Inception but it was just a thought I had once the movie was over.
Nevertheless, this does not diminish the fact that Inception is an outstanding movie. Nolan has created what many will consider a masterpiece. For me, I just hope it’s another movie in a long line of masterpieces that we will see from this director and storyteller. It makes me look forward to July 20, 2012 that much more. (9 out of 10)