Inception Review

After the slew of mediocre summer movies so far (with Iron Man 2 being the only exception) there was a lot of pressure on Inception to deliver. It's Christopher Nolan directing Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, and Cillian Murphy in a crazy ass psychological thriller. How could you not be excited? I went into the theater pretty much in the dark about plot specifics. The trailers had been very vague and Nolan himself had said he wanted to keep things unknown. Which was really refreshing to see and hear. Every goddamn movie feels the need to tell the entire story in the trailer. There was a trailer before this with Ben Affleck in it that clearly showed what probably was the biggest "oh shit" moment of the movie. It's retarded to show this much in a trailer, the story should be good enough to whet people's appetites and get them to watch based on that. It's really cool to see a guy like Nolan understand that and market his film in a way that had kept most viewers relatively in the dark. I think that's what makes Nolan such a great filmmaker, he gets it. In the Batman franchise it's obvious he gets the character and with Inception's marketing it's clear he gets how to tailor interest in his films. I'm going to stay extremely spoiler-free here too so if you haven't seen it, feel free to read onward.

I was completely blown away. The story was extremely simple on a logline level, but the details of the plot were really intricate and kept you involved. Not for a single second was I ever "out of" this movie. And not in a bad way, I was so drawn into this fucking insane world Nolan created that it was all I could focus on. The best phrase I've heard to describe this move was a thinking man's blockbuster. It really

was. Had a giant budget from what I've heard (around $160 mil) but for once, really, really deserved it. You can see just from the trailers some of the insane sequences that obviously required a lot of time and money to do. Plus it wasn't vapid or mindless like most $150 mil+ movies tend to be, you had to really pay attention to what was going on or else you'd be lost. Some critics complained that it was too confusing, but for the most part I didn't have any trouble keeping up. Aside from a minor plot point or two, I was completely caught up with what was going on. Without spoiling too much, Nolan did a good job of giving some sort of explanation of what was going to happen before it did so it was easy to keep up. Just don't go into this expecting one of those sit back and turn off type movies. You gotta be really into what's going on screen. And honestly it's hard not to.

The cast was incredible. There were a few Nolan usuals with Michael Caine, Ken Wanatabe, and Cillian Murphy who were all as amazing as they were in the Batman films. But seeing Nolan work with DiCaprio and JGL was an amazing collaboration. DiCaprio's character was really deep and drove the entire story. JGL had a major portion of action in these fantastic anti-gravity type scenes, where he was moving around like fucking Peter Parker. Seeing Nolan turn these scenes into fight sequences was seriously one of the coolest looking things I've seen in a theater. Watching JGL bounce around, completely against logic of physics, beating the shit out of guys in suits was INCREDIBLE. I could seriously just watch a compilation of those scenes for 2 hours and be pleased. The entire film had a really cool, noir type vibe to it, a lot had to do with the wardrobe design, but the lighting and shadows helped give it a completely unique look. As much as I love Batman (and anybody who remotely knows me knows that love is an understatement) it'd be really cool to see Nolan do more work like this. I don't mean like Inception 2, but he clearly has a handle on what looks amazing on screen and to pigeon-hole him as the "Batman guy" would be criminal.

Everything about this move worked well. I didn't feel a second of it's run time and literally just now found out that it was 148 mins. Unlike The Dark Knight, which while amazing did feel a bit long, this movie absolutely flew by. To me that's one of the greatest marks of a film's quality. Even Lord of the Rings, which granted was about 30 mins. longer, but it really felt its runtime. This didn't. It moved from amazing sequence to amazing sequence with a story that literally blew my mind. For someone like me who's really into lucid dreaming it was cool to see a director take a story and shape it in a setting like that. Nolan visually did whatever he wanted with this movie and it worked every single time. I really can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm more excited to see more of his original ideas than the next Batman. If I haven't been clear in this gushing review here let me reiterate: Christopher Nolan is a fucking genius and has just put out the best film of his career. This was easily the most unique and best film I've seen all year. Single-handedly saved the movie-going experience this summer. Hopefully this sets a precedent for what a summer blockbuster can be. I hope this movie makes a trillion dollars, it'll have earned every single penny and encourages more originality in Hollywood. Repeat viewings are a must, not to understand the story, but to re-experience this mind-blowing world Nolan created.

Bottom line: With a perfect mix of stunning visual imagery, science fiction/psychological story elements, and an absolutely amazing cast, Inception sets a new bar for what summer movies can be; mind blowing, intense, original works of art.

Overall score: 10/10

***Note: This is 2nd film in a row that I gave a 10/10 to. I just noticed this. I don't usually give out 10s, it just happens that the last two movies I reviewed were masterpieces. So yeah.