Visual and Sound Effects: 8/10
Writing: 7/10
Brain-hurtiness: 8/10
How much you kinda wish Nolan would just make the next Batman already: 6/10
The Bottom Line: If you're in the market for a well-crafted thriller that rewards careful attention, this one is for you.
The tinseltown folklore has it that Christopher Nolan has wanted to make this movie ever since he finished Memento, but thought he needed more experience in a big-budget, large-scale format in order to pull it off. So he agreed to do Batman Begins and The Dark Knight as "practice."
Overall, I don't find Inception as powerful as The Dark Knight or as innovative as Memento, but that's not to say that that this film isn't powerful or innovative. It keeps you on the edge of your seat for pretty much the duration of Acts 2 and 3, and it's puzzling enough to keep messing with your head well after you leave the theater.
Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an "extractor," that is, a very special kind of thief. He can break into your dreams and extract very private thoughts from your unconscious mind. The science of this is all a little iffy, of course, but once you buy the initial premise, Nolan is pretty good at sticking to the rules he's made for himself. Cobb has been focusing his efforts as of late on corporate espionage. These types of jobs can be especially tricky becausein the universe of this movie, dream extraction is apparently common enough that people who know important enough secrets can purchase training to protect themselves against this kind of theft. This training causes one's unconscious mind to project a personal army into one's dreams that can guard against invaders. Yes, this is suspiciously convenient for the purposes of an action movie, but it makes for badass enough action scenes that I'm not complaining.
What's not so common in this film world is "inception," which is like extraction except it involves putting an idea in someone's head instead of taking one out. Apparently, there is debate within the universe of this movie whether such a thing is even possible, but a very rich and powerful man who thinks it is has hired Cobb to perform an inception. Add to the mix that Cobb is, of course, dealing with some difficult personal stuff as well, and you've got all the ingredients for a high stakes crime caper combined with a sci-fi mindf***.
A lesser director would have gotten so caught up in exploring the amazing world that s/he created, that s/he'd forget to, you know, make a movie. But Nolan manages to tell his story compellingly in the midst of all the twists and explosions. There are a few moments when Nolan seems to have temporarily lost track of his own rules or when the writing seems a tiny bit forced. Unfortunately, I can't give specific examples without giving away some spoilers, but I can say that they are momentary distractions in an otherwise tightly-knit thriller.
A word to the wise though: like Memento, this movie expects you to pay attention. But it's worth it if you do. I thought I paid very good attention, but I wish I had paid even better attention so that I could have more of an opinion on the ending. This is one of those movies that is content to end ambiguously. I've personally always found that ambiguous endings toe a fine line between a genuine artistic choice by a filmmaker to ask more questions than s/he answers and a last minute cop-out because the filmmaker doesn't know how to end his/her film. And honestly, I'd have to watch Inception at least once more before I can decide which side of that line its ending falls on for me.
But in any case, the journey to that ending is worth the price of admission.
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