If you’re like me and are ready to toss dirt on the coffin of this year’s summer movie season, you can put away the shovel for the time being. Just in time to save us from the likes of Aston Kutcher, wimpy vampires and The Four Horsewomen of the Apocalypse (aka Sex and the City 2) comes Christopher Nolan’s highly-anticipated follow up to his 2008 masterpiece The Dark Knight, the science-fiction head trip Inception. And unlike most movies shoved down our collective throats this summer, this dazzling motion picture not only matches the anticipation and hype surrounding it, it easily surpasses it.
Without giving too much away (the less you know, the better), Inception centers on “extractor” Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a person capable of entering the mind of an individual while they are dreaming. Cobb’s talents are largely used best by corporations who hire him to invade the mind of rival executives to steal their most valued business secrets that are deep within their subconscious. Cobb is hired by a Japanese billionaire named Saito (Ken Watanabe) for a rather unique task: instead of extracting information from a rival of Saito’s (Cillian Murphy), Dom is to plant an inception in his memory that will help cause the demise of Fischer’s corporation.
In order to carry out the job, Cobb assembles a team to help him map out a plan and execute it. His crew consists of an inexperienced but talented Dreamscape architect (Ellen Page), a “forger” (Tom Hardy) who can change his appearance to control a dream, a chemist (Dileep Rao) and his longtime planner (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). While the financial aspect of the assignment will undoubtedly be huge, the personal gain for Cobb will be far greater: if successful, Saito will be able to clear Dom of previous wrongdoing that cost him his wife (Marion Cotillard) and children while making him an international fugitive.
Nolan, having worked on the screenplay for the last decade, isn’t making one film with Inception. He appears to be making several at once. The first hour, which covers the assembly of Dom’s crew and the planning of the big mind crime, is classic heist-movie material. The foot and car chases and gun battles across multiple continents are straight out of the Jason Bourne and James Bond playbooks, while the director’s examination of dreams, the danger of holding onto memories and the blurring between perception and reality are the type of deep-thinking materials previously examined in films such as the original Matrix, 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and even David Lynch’s 2001 classic Mulholland Drive.
Attempting to successfully cover so much ground at once could have resulted in a loud, overbearing, convoluted train wreck of a summer popcorn movie that only succeeds in wearing – and dumbing – down the viewer. In most filmmaker’s hands, a project like Inception would guarantee a disaster or at the very least a confusing mess. But Christopher Nolan is a rarity. He’s a filmmaker who not only can handle a project of this scope; he can create something truly unique with it. He knows how to balance multiple characters and storylines, intelligently flesh out theories and ideas and execute some kick-ass action sequences without one canceling out another. Nolan respects his viewer’s intelligence, challenges them to pay attention and trusts them to come up with their own conclusion to what actually happened as opposed to spelling it out for them. The last time a near-$200 million summer movie did that was two years ago… which was The Dark Knight.
To give only Christopher Nolan praise would be an injustice to all involved. To fully flesh out his new world Nolan needed a strong cast to be in place, which is precisely what he has here. DiCaprio’s Dom is a character not unlike the one he played in Martin Scorsese’s mediocre adaptation of Shutter Island. The talented actor does a solid job playing a broken man trying to correct the events of his past only to make things worse in the process. He’s backed by solid supporting turns from Levitt, Page, Watanabe, Murphy, Cotillard and Hardy. I would also comment on Michael Caine’s performance, but since he is only in the film for all of five minutes (if less), there really isn’t much to say.
Is Inception perfect? No. At 148 minutes, it goes on for about ten minutes too long during the third act. And while the movie is technically brilliant in each and every department, it does lack a certain emotional connection. The storyline centering on Dom and his wife, which is meant to be the emotional core of the film, doesn’t quite achieve the impact that Nolan may have been hoping for. There is some, but not enough.
In a season where Hollywood is thriving on sequels, remakes, reboots and product that caters to the level beneath the lowest common denominator, Inception stands as a breathtaking accomplishment. The latest feature from my favorite commercial filmmaker of the last decade is a beautiful, thrilling cinematic ride that will stick in your collective memory for days – if not longer – after you see it.
– Shawn Fitzgerald
