by Tom Stewart

Created on: July 30, 2010

Inception (2010)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe

Rated: PG-13

With so many movies coming out in 3D this year, this is the one that should have. ‘Inception’ has in-your-face action and special effects with a story that takes you into a dream inside of a dream (inside of another dream). Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb a not-so-common thief who invades people’s dreams in order to steal valuable information. When offered a chance to have his regular life back he assembles a team of experts to help him with his toughest quest ever. Along the way the story becomes a complicated series of dreams inside dreams with Cobb’s own real-life conflicts distorting the plan. With a plot this confusing you might think the movie would be hard to follow. But director and writer Christopher Nolan does a superb job at keeping the movie on track without losing the audience. The movie does have plenty of twists and turns and by the end you’ll be wondering if the whole story was real or just a dream from the start. It is a longer than average movie with a running time of 2 hours and 28 minutes. But the time does fly by. There are no lulls in the story or the action. You will need your thinking cap though as your brain will be trying to figure what is going on the entire time. With most of the movie being in a dream state, just about anything is possible. So let your imagination run wild!

The only negative things I could find about this movie, and there weren’t many, would be that there isn’t enough information given about how Cobb developed his abilities and how the science of dream insertion came about. Perhaps that story will make for a good prequel movie. The other problem I found, a minor one, is that some symbols in the movie that seemed they were going to be prominent to the story line ended up not being relevant at all. One example, without too much spoiler information, is that each character who enters dreams keeps a special ‘token’ on them. It’s an object unique to them that they can use as an indicator of whether or not they are in a dream or in real-life. Cobb’s object was a small metal top. If he spun the top and it eventually toppled over it meant he was in real-life. If it keeps spinning it means he is still in a dream. This symbol was quite important to Cobb and the plot. But the movie made it a point to show the specific token, a chess piece, used by Ariadne, played by Ellen Page. There were scenes showing her considering what token to use, making it, and testing it out. But then we never see her use the token again. It seemed to me like they either shortened the story for time by taking out whatever this scene was foreshadowing or the scene was just not necessary. Perhaps it was a set-up for this character to be in a sequel.

Overall this is a superb movie. It seems lately that movie studios have been spending too much time making sequels, cartoons, and movies based on television shows and comic books. Seeing a well written movie with great acting and special effects that is a true original is a nice refreshing change. You’ll be talking about this movie on the car ride home and most likely the next day at work. And that is always a sign of a good movie experience.

I give this movie 4 ½ out of 5 spinning metal tops.

Learn more about this author, Tom Stewart.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.