Film
Inception
- Director
- Christopher Nolan
- Certificate
- 12A
- Running Time
- 148 mins
Christopher Nolan‘s wholly original, intelligent science fiction heist movie works through the ramifications of its internal logic meticulously, never allows its emotional heart to be overwhelmed by flashy eye-candy, and delivers enough thoroughly entertaining visceral action to keep the dimmest multiplex knuckle-dragger engaged even when they’ve completely lost the plot. Pedants might object that Inception is just a tad too long, and suffers from the kind of overbearing score that also afflicted the previous movie in which Leo DiCaprio struggled with the notion of reality (Shutter Island), but these are minor niggles. Just sit back and marvel at how skilfully Nolan brains-up the blockbuster, keeping those balls in the air all the way to that exquisite final shot.
Dom Cobb (DiCaprio) is the most skilled ‘extractor’ in the world of cutting-edge corporate espionage, specialising in stealing secrets from the subconscious mind by creating and manipulating dreams. The opening sequence establishes the rules by which this can be achieved, and hints at a traumatic event in Cobb’s past which has left him an international fugitive who can never return to the US to see his children. Now he’s been hired by wealthy industrialist Saito (Ken Watanabe), who has a novel proposal: rather than extracting information from business rival Robert Fishcher (Cillian Murphy), he wants an idea planted in the man’s mind. To do this without arousing suspicion, so that Fischer believes the thought has occurred to him spontaneously, will entail navigating several dream layers and require the skills of a hand-picked crew recruited in traditional heist movie style. Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is Cobb’s trusted long-term wingman; Ariadne (Ellen Page) is the eager young architect responsible for the internal structure of the dreams; and Eames (Tom Hardy) is the forger who, in this context, projects images of real people in the dreamworld.
In addition to the globetrotting action and breathtaking set-pieces, Nolan slices confidently through time and multiple layers of unreality as he elucidates the circumstances that have led to Cobb’s exile and could ultimately endanger the lives of everybody. It’s a genuinely thrilling, intellectually satisfying ride, now celebrating its 10th anniversary.
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