Joseph Gordon-Levitt and friend in Inception
The good news: I’m not going to give away any of the mind-bending twists that lay at the center of Christopher Nolan‘s highly-anticipated sci-fi mindfuck Inception.
The bad news: That’s because there aren’t any to give away.
Does it matter if the glass is half-full or half-empty if you only bought the ticket in the first place to see the glass turn upside-down?
Leo hates bath time!
I’m a geek for hyper-cerebral flights of fancy and puzzlebox entertainment (Lost was far too pedestrian for me, and I scoff at Sudoku!). And perhaps because of this I was expecting a serious mindfuck of an experience from Inception, seeing as how it’s got such a solid director, great cast and intriguing central premise. (Oh, by the way – that would be breaking into other people’s dreams either to extract – or plant – information.)
But much like the stuff of dreams themselves, Inception proves to be pretty slippery – while on the surface it might seem to be as massive and perilous as Paris folding in on itself or a freight train materializing in a busy city street, in the end it’s less than the sum of its glossy, super-slo-mo parts. Fortunately, that still puts it in the general neighborhood of “way better than anything else that’s coming out right now”, but it still makes for a mildly unsatisfying watch, overall.
Ellen Page looks for a way out
The plot is pretty simple, believe it or not: A team of thieves hire themselves out (mostly to big corporations) to break into people’s dreams in order to steal important info. The team leader, Dom Cobb (no, I’m not making that up – and no, it’s not on the salad menu), is a man with a dark secret who is haunted by the death of his hot French wife, who now pops up in his own dreams. The team takes One Last Case in an attempt to win Dom’s entry back into the United States so he can see his kids.
And that’s it! I won’t spoil the details of the job, as they’re pretty much all the movie has to prop itself up on, aside from a few neat pictures. Acres of spoken exposition and millions of bullets and snowmobile chases later, we come to a reasonably satisfying conclusion.
In the end, the engaging but rather mechanical Inception was a bit of a letdown. Sure, it’s got the amazing visuals and sumptuous sets that anyone who has enjoyed Nolan’s reboot of the Batman franchise – myself included – will enjoy (as well as many returning castmembers, including Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe and Michael Caine).
Tom Hardy
It’s got Ellen Page not being pregnant OR snarky, Leonardo DiCaprio being Leonardo DiCaprio, and – by the evidence of the swarms of good-looking men in gorgeous suits that populate the movie – the luckiest and hardest-working tailor in Hollywood snipping its threads. (I would give my left eye to measure an inseam on Tom Hardy, and I’m not ashamed to say it.)
It’s got a fun premise and a few impeccably-staged action scenes that hinge both on exquisite timing and the difficult sell of making the audience believe that these dream-crashers are in legitimate peril, which Nolan pulls off with aplomb. All of this is just dandy, and certainly enough to make Inception worth seeing. It’s surely the most solidly-rendered movie so far this summer.
But in the end the film isn’t nearly as clever as it has you thinking it is. (Which may be very clever in itself, until you get wise to it.) It lacks both the intrigue and the complexities of character needed to deliver a fully satisfying experience – for one, the B-players literally have no identities beyond their roles in the scheme, making the entire enterprise feel more designed than inspired.
The main story – which involves DiCaprio and his team planning to attempt an “inception” (the thought-to-be-impossible act of planting of an idea into a dreamer’s mind, so that they wake believing that it is their original thought) on an unsuspecting businessman – does hinge on one major mystery, but unfortunately it’s way too easy to figure out. I was left hoping for more twists and turns, but the story plays out with a surprising lack of complications.
Perhaps because most of the movie is ballasted by the mechanical workings of the dream-invasion scheme, its most entertaining moments come during scenes that have little to do with the plot and are mostly just its characters bopping about in the dreamscape and having fun with it.
An early scene where DiCaprio’s ringleader character drafts Page (playing a wide-eyed young architect) to build the dream worlds for their scam is fun because eventually Page’s character basically tunes out DiCaprio’s and starts messing with the dream on her own. Likewise a later sequence where Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character maneuvers a handful of sleeping colleagues in a zero-gravity hotel – it’s just so damn fun to see this guy dancing off the walls (in skin-fitted trousers, I might add) that you forget about the whole storyline altogether.
Much like Page’s character, I found myself wanting to wander away from the heist to play with the buildings. Though comparisons to The Matrix and Memento might be more obvious, when coming out of the film it reminded me most of Cronenberg‘s Existenz … only without the sense of humor.
Maybe if Nolan had further indulged his characters’ playful sides , Inception might have been brilliant. As it is, it’s a better-than average sci-fi film with lots of pretty things upside-down.
RATING (OUT OF 5):
Inception is Rated PG-13 for scenes of action violence, strong language, and the most droolworthy goddamn tailoring this side of Mad Men.
I just saw it and I enjoyed it very much, some great visuals, and everyone in the movie was really, ridiculously good looking.
SPOILERS!!
No way, the minor characters didn’t have identities to elude to the fact that they may only exist in the first level of one of Leo’s dreams. That thing they were hinting at the entire movie. Try to see if they ever show how Leo got anywhere in reality, or if he just shows up places. You seem to have written a review more about the wardrobes than the subtext. Like all of Nolan’s films, the twist isn’t a mindfuck of storytelling genius, it’s just an explanation for the discontinuity. I think you maybe made an opinion and started writing a review halfway into the film, and didn’t wait around to see if it made sense…. which while I’m not sure if it did, there’s no way I’ve figured out that it didn’t. I mean shit, we were successfully following along through 5 layers of subconscious at one point, it was hard to even glance at the details, but they were all there.
All of the most overhyped “indie cool” actors in the latest film from Hollywood’s most overhyped director (there was nothing, absolutely nothing I enjoyed about The Dark Knight).
I’ll go see Predators instead.
I agree with dotherightthing. At the start of the review Buzz boasts about being a smart cookie, but then makes it painfully obvious that he or she did not pick up on most of the films hints and clues. How embarrassing!
Alright, I’ll take the bait.
SPOILERS!
Yes, I get it. Really, when you’re going into a dream-based movie, the whole “or was it aaalllllll a dreeeeeeeeeeeeam?” gag is pretty much the FIRST thing you look out for. Now, was I going to mention that and discuss the ending of the film in a spoiler-free review? No. I mean, I may be a bit smug, but I’m not an asshole.
But beyond that, by the end of the movie I really just didn’t care – for the reasons I outlined in the review. The characters weren’t interesting (whether that was deliberate or not is irrelevant – either way it’s simply not compelling storytelling), the plot was mechanical, and there was very little beyond the kickin’ visuals that was genuinely unexpected or surprising.
I didn’t say I didn’t like the movie, remember – I just didn’t love it. I praised it for what it did well, but where it failed for me – namely, in engaging the audience emotionally – it really failed. If you want to see Leo DiCaprio sweating and snapping in a movie that’s really just an elaborate illusion, he made another film just last year that did it all in a far more engrossing fashion. In my opinion.
I haven’t seen it yet, but I was wondering how much this film is like “Dreamscape” with Dennis Quaid from the early 80s? I know that one was of its time with the president being worried about nuclear war, but when I first heard about people entering other peoples’ dreams, I wondered if there might have been a little thievery from “Dreamscape.” Or have I completely misunderstood the premise?
If this film had a cool Snakeman I’d consider seeing it.
It really could have used a Snakeman. Or a guy with finger-knives, at least.
Potential–but not really?–SPOILERS
I kind of agree with you, Buzz. I liked it a little more than you; but, I wasn’t like my boyfriend, who was ready to sit back down and watch it again. I loved the ambiguity of the ending and, ultimately, it doesn’t matter which camp you belong in (It was all a dream! It was all real life!) because it will never be explained and the clues are so minute, vague, or pointless that there isn’t any use in picking the concept apart.
However, three things outside of the basic premise had me hooked:
1. The costuming (Tom Hardy and Ellen Page’s, specifically; but, as a whole, the characters’ costumes were akin to character melodies in musicals);
2. The music (Hans Zimmer FTW…but, the over usage did make it seem like a long trailer, at points);
3. Eagerly anticipating Ellen Page to come out of the closet in a scene.
Yes, it was good; but, I have no real desire to see it again.
(Also, the make-up was the absolute worst. Old Ken Watanabe in the limbo? He was wearing what looked like excess foreskin. Ew.)
#3 FTW! Mwa-haaaaaa!
SPOILERS-sort of
Well Buzz, I’ll grant you that you that your “analysis” of the “gimmick” is right on – it’s a well written review. And what is a review but an opinion anyway. Nolan’s entered into the space where opinions go on and on forever and ever – existentialism. And when one enters into that space, many “don’t like it”, but if they have half a mind they can appreciate it, which seems to be the view you’ve taken.
Afterall, there is no practical purpose for existentialism, other than “inceiving”, and making people endlessly think (which may actually lead to the occasional “practical purpose”). I’m guessing that Nolan, doing what he does, understands better than some why dreams and original thought (inception) is important for the human race – arguably more important than anything else.
You have at least admitted that the movie stands on its own, as have more or less 85% of the techno savvy population. I will tell you what Nolan’s also done, and why I think he spent 2+ hours assailing us with neutron star dense dialogue: he set the foundation.
He’s possibly successfully set up a new franchise, that can build to greater and greater heights.
thanks for ruining the movie dumbass. now when I watch it I will know there are no twists coming.
terrible reviewer will avoid in future…