Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) fights off an armed enemy “projection” while in a dream-within-a-dream in “Inception.” |
I love this movie!
Christopher Nolan’s insanely imaginative and intelligently trippy “Inception” is “Mission Impossible” led by a corporate Freddy Krueger in a mind-bending adventure that could have been designed by artist M.C. Escher.
My brain still hurts from trying to absorb it all. But it’s a good kind of hurt.
Just when you think “Inception” can’t possibly become more complex and more commanding of our attention, it does. Then does it some more.
Yet, if you’re paying attention (yes, you must!), you can keep up with what’s going on even as you witness five parallel levels of reality unfolding at the same time.
Oh, and something that happens in one reality impacts what happens in the others.
(I warned you that it was insanely imaginative and intelligently trippy.)
Taking a tip from “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” writer/director Nolan kick-starts “Inception” with the kind of bravura action sequence that most movies save for their climaxes.
It’s an elaborate scenario in which professional “extractor” Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) leads a team scheme to steal information from a wealthy industrialist, Saito (Ken Watanabe), inside his dreams.
Big fake!
It’s actually a test run so that Saito can see how Cobb works his highly illegal dream heist.
Saito isn’t interested in hiring Cobb to steal corporate secrets. He wants Cobb and his team to plant an idea – an “inception” – into the dreams of his business rival’s son, Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy) so he will think splitting up his father’s corporate empire was self-inspired. (Read more…)