I saw a midnight showing of Inception last night. With high hopes for Inception Christopher Nolan delivers. A star-studded cast does not disappoint as the acting was top-notch.
The basic premise of Inception without giving out too many spoilers is Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a thief who makes a living from stealing ideas from people's minds. Saito(Ken Watanabe)offers Cobb one last job to plant an idea in rival businessman Robert Fischer Jr.(Cillian Murphy). If successful Cobb may return home to his family. Cobb then assembles a top-notch team for this one last mission: information expert Arther(Joseph Gordon-Levitt), architect Ariadne(Ellen Page), the forger Eames(Tom Hardy), and a chemist Yusuf(Dileep Rao). Mal(Marion Cotillard) is Cobb's wife who frequently reappears in the dreams.
The premise of the film is very original and all the dream worlds are breathtaking. The effects are top-notch and the action scenes pack a punch. All the characters played their respective roles well, as no actor disappointed. The movies is rather long at 2 hours 28 minutes but, the length of the movie is needed to fully describe the complexity of the plot without leaving movie-goers lost.
The movie however is not perfect [MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD]:
The character development is very one dimensional for most of the characters. However this is expected due to time constraints. To flesh out each character in-depth would take a 4 hour movie. The key characters do however evolve and face their biggest regrets.
There are some minor plot holes in the story. These plot holes however do not take away from the story because the viewer is expected to believe them. One in particular that bugged me was how Saito could make one phone call to allow Cobb back into the U.S. this however was very minor and the viewer can watch the movie without ever noticing such a thing.
The final small gripe was that of the dreamworlds. The technology used for dreamsharing was never fully explained. I was very interested on how the machine works. Do they just hook up and share dreams or what? And how do we know who's dream they go in? The biggest is how Ariadne can create these dreamworlds and implant them in other's dreams? None of these need to be explained to enjoy the movie but it would have been some nice information to have.
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I highly recommend seeing this movie. I give it 5/5 stars. Its a visual spectacle and the story is very in-depth and thought provoking. Nolan is easily one of the best directors of our time.