Normally when it comes to big budget summer entertainment at the movies, I don’t expect much more than an entertainingly loud and stupid F/X laden piece of work. And that is if I am lucky. A lot of times I get the loud & stupid, but the entertaining part is missing. Now, I am about to use one word to describe the new film by director Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight), and that word would be..SMART.
Walking out of this movie, I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about it. The running time is about 2 hours and 30 minutes, and at times the pacing is really slow. I can tell you the person I saw the movie with (my mother) absolutely hated the film. And I kept hearing people talking around me, asking the person that they were watching the movie with what was happening on screen. I also noticed that there were people getting agitated with how much was happening on the screen at once.
“Inception” is not an easy film to review because there is so much going on in the story and if I decided to talk about it in this review, it may affect your enjoyment of experiencing the film. I made it a point to not read up on anything about the film before seeing it and Warner Brothers has been very smart about keeping much of the story out of the trailers.
The premise of the film follows Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a skilled dream thief, who assembles a team which consists of Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Ariadne (Ellen Page), Eames (Tom Hardy), & Yusuf (Dileep Rao). They take a job from Saito (Ken Watanabe) to implant an idea into a business competitor of Saito named Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). The problem is that implanting an idea in someone’s mind is much more complicated than taking one out. That is really the most I would like to tell you about the story as the movie works best when the audience knows as little as possible. I do not want to spoil the story for you.
When I tell you that the movie is smart, I really mean it. This is not your average summer blockbuster fare. It will be interesting to see how the general public accepts the film because it is a strong piece of work but at the same time, it is not for everyone. Don’t expect anything to be just handed to you because you are going to have to work pretty hard at staying on top of things that are happening on screen. If you are reading my review and still a little confused on how I actually felt about the movie, that might make quite a bit of sense considering I am still not 100% sure. I would recommend it based on the level of masterful work that is on display in the film. The last 20 minutes are incredible. There are some beautiful landscapes that have been created in dream worlds. All the actors involved give strong performances and Nolan really knows how to bring us something on screen that we haven’t seen before.
“Inception” plays out like a complex maze and if you find yourself struggling with the film, just let it play out and do not worry about how complex it is. At its core, the film is an old school heist movie…the only thing that’s different, is that they are not robbing banks, they are robbing minds. I may have to give “Inception” a second viewing when it comes out on blu-ray so I can really get a better idea of my feelings towards the film. This is actually one of those movies that lends itself to repeat viewings because there is so much going on that you might have missed some things the first time around.
By: Marc Ferman
