Inception (2010)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard, Ken Watanabe, Dileep Rao

Date: July 2010

Plot: In a world where technology exists to enter the human mind through dream invasion, a highly skilled thief is given a final chance at redemption which involves executing his toughest job to date: Inception. (from IMDB)

Trailer - Inception


Review: Woah!! Firstly, my bad! I know this movie has been out for ages and is on DVD/BluRay already but I just never got around to reviewing it. Now that it is in the mix for Best Picture at the Oscars this year I have the perfect excuse to re-watch it and do the long awaited review.

So here goes, Cobb (DiCaprio) and Arthur (Gordon-Levitt) are both skilled thieves who use new technology to invade the dreams of an individual to learn, and steal, their inner most secrets.
Cobb, who is on the run, is approached and offered a job which will pay him enough money to stop running, the job though is to invade the dream of Robert Fischer (Murphy), the soon to be beneficiary of his fathers company, and implant an idea in his subconscious, this act of inception is all but impossible but for the sake of his freedom Cobb is going to attempt it.

As 99% of you who have seen this know, this movie takes a while to comprehend, sometimes a second watching! The lines between reality and dream world blur very quickly and you really have to be on your toes to keep up. The mind blowing and unbelievable special effects and storyline are very reminiscent of The Matrix when it was first released back in 1999.

The casting is very typical of Christopher Nolan as he is infamous for using the same actors in many of his movies, alot of the cast of Inception including Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard, Michael Cane and Ken Watanabe have appeared or are set to appear in other Nolan productions. That is not to say they are bad choices! I do admire that a Director can have such a great relationship with his cast and always get the best out of them.

Leonardo DiCaprio has not worked with Christopher Nolan before but he has been on an great run over the past few years with great performances in Blood Diamond, The Departed, Revolutionary Road and Shutter Island. It's hard to say a bad thing about him post Blood Diamond really and Inception can be added to the list.

As I said, the story is a little hard to comprehend without a bit of serious concentration but once you get the general idea you can relax and enjoy the action sequences, particularly the hallway fight scene and the insane special effects, which alone are proof that this film deserves to be nominated in the Best Picture category.

In case you haven't seen it yet I won't give away the ending but you really should rent/buy this as soon as possible!