Inception

"You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger darling." Christopher Nolan has dreamt about as big as you can without actually touching the sun. In a summer full of films where the most original idea is a sequel, Inception is fresh, exciting and the most daring project I've seen in a long time. It challenges the mind, and where most movies are just CGI fodder, Inception has the great honor of being both incredibly entertaining and intellectually stimulating.

What little that could be gleaned from the trailer from this film didn't really tell anyone anything about Inception. Everyone just knew that it was about dreams and about Christopher Nolan's big, sexy directing skills. In the near future (or perhaps the present) the military has invented (of course they did) a device that allows several people to be together in one dream. The obvious benefit for the military is to train soldiers to fight and potentially die, without actually getting harmed. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) has one of these devices, although it is never explained why or how, and is employing it for a very different purpose: corporate espionage. Companies hire him to kidnap rival employees, put them under, and discover their secrets. By creating a situation in which the dreamer feels that he is actually in reality, they can get him to admit what he knows or find a place in his mind where he keeps the secrets they want. Cobb than extracts the secrets, gets out of the dream (usually by getting killed within the dream) and makes a profit. But when a job goes bad, the man he had attempted to extract proposes a new idea, inception. He wants Cobb and his team to go into someones mind and plant an idea, specifically the idea to break up his fathers monopoly, because as Cobb said, "When an idea takes hold, it never lets go," but to plant an idea that complex will take dreams within dreams to make the subject truly believe that he had thought of the idea himself. As Cobb's team descends deeper into the subconscious, the line between reality and imagination starts to blur.

It's a lot to swallow, and took me a couple of hours combined with crazy, trippy dreams to really wrap my head around it. Confusing isn't even the beginning of it, but it is so masterfully done that I can forgive it quite easily. The cast itself is about as amazing as it gets, with enough awards between them to start a gold store: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Micheal Caine, Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, and Marion Cotilliard. All fantastic and all very talented. DiCaprio's seasoned leadership, Gordon-Levitt's cool composure under fire, and Murphy's emotional journey are just a few examples of great scenes in the movie.

The special effects in Inception may be the very best thing about it, with almost all scenes doing away with the CGI that plagues other films. Nolan has opted for the best that money can buy. Car chases, vans falling off bridges in slow motion, mountaintop buildings exploding in a rain of fire, and the very best fight scene I can think of. Reminiscent of The Matrix, Gordon-Levitt has to fend off subconcious bodyguards in a rotating hall way. As up becomes down he has to manuever his way through the hall and get out alive. That's not even mentioning the moment when the hall stops rotating and loses gravity all together. My jaw was literally open wide enough for someone to throw an apple into.

The most recurring part of Inception, and also the most annoying is Cobb's influence on the dream. His dead wife (Marion Cotilliard) overpowers the regular subjects' subconscious and messes with the dream. His personal battles with the demons inside his head consistently ruin the plan and eventually get really bothersome. At least forty five minutes of footage contribute to this and could have easily been used to help explain the plot better. It was like watching the dream sequences of Shutter Island again.

The plot has a couple of holes in it that can drag the movie down a bit. Like, why was Ellen Page really necessary? How did Saito (Ken Watanabe) skip a dream? and how did Cobb get there? Why did the architect create a moutaintop retreat and then plant their starting point about 7 miles away? If all it takes to jump back to the previous dream is a sudden change in gravity, why didn't they jump back all those times they had incredible falls? and why is Joseph Gordon-Levitt so good looking?

At two and a half hours, Inception is a long one, but I didn't once think about it, my attention was gripped from beginning to end. It took me a long time to figure out how I was going to rate Inception. I decided that in the end I can forgive all of its flaws specifically because it is the most original movie I will see this year and I am expecting multiple awards and honors to descend on this superb film. Christopher Nolan wasn't afraid to dream big.

3 and a half out of 4 stars

-Christopher O'Connell

Spoiler alert! do not read on!
for those who have seen the movie, I like to think that in the end, he did make it back home.