Inception (2010)

Christopher Nolan was the greatest revelation of the 2000s in terms of writing/directing. After "Memento" (2000), "Insomnia" (2002), "Batman Begins" (2005), "The Prestige" (2006) and "Dark Knight" (2008) he established himself as a great master of the mind-bending thriller with an action edge. "Inception" was no exception to this genre, and was promoted as a film which explored to the fullest the depths of the mind. Yet it does not have the emotional depth of Dark Knight, nor the raw psychological simplicity of Memento or Insomnia. The story gives the movie these characteristics, but the movie itself fails to make use of them as the previous examples have. The story is simple to follow, but the twists and turns to get from A to B are often unnecessary and end up just being filling material. Yet, "Inception" can still be a great insightful action/psychological/thriller, which uses its premises to give very appealing action and chase sequences which flow nicely, but is a little too long on its 2h30 hours. DiCaprio is the leader of a team that steals thoughts in people's dreams. He and his team members (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy) enter in a common dream with the victim and explore their subconscious to get the information they want. But DiCaprio has a past, involving the death of his wife, and so he can't go back to his kids in the States. A mission goes wrong and Ken Watanabe offers them one last job, the job that can square DiCaprio's debts. If instead of stealing a though they can introduce one (inception) in Cilliam Murphy's head, then DiCaprio can go home. Ellen Page joins the team as the "architect" of the dream world and off they plan the mission. This is about the first hour, and we understand how the dream and the world reality work and mix. But as they start the great mission something goes wrong and all hell breaks loose, as they are trapped in dreams, and dreams inside dreams, etc. The way this concept is used is not new (existenz for example) but the way they turn it into action is very clever (the subconscious reveals itself as man with guns, good for action sequences and chases; there are various scenarios, from a fortress in the snow to the sea side beach to the inner city). As they try to complete their mission the movie balances DiCaprio's inner daemons and dreams related to the death of his wife, to the various stages of dream within a dream. You never get lost, the editing flows nicely and the tension really grabs you as all these worlds are shown in parallel. The ending may be somewhat predictable and always leave that doubt of whether it is reality or just another dream within a dream (as existenz). This is almost an epic of the psychological action thriller, a movie to set your standards to, and with the Nolan seal of approval. Yet, after seeing the depths he could go with Dark Knight, I was left somewhat disappointed. In the latter he explored the mind and the daemons brilliantly. Here they had the mind literally and they had the daemons physically inside the dreams. My feeling is that he could have squeezed a little bit more out of it. The action and the necessity to balance the different scenarios in a coherent editing won in the end, and the relation of DiCaprio to his wife Marion Cotillard and sons suffered from it, to powerful, yes, but somewhat predictable, turns. Recommended it anyway. It was a truly original concept and a thriller like only few are made in current cinema.