INCEPTION [2010] review

I think Christopher Nolan with INCEPTION has cemented himself as director of the decade having kicked it off with MEMENTO.  Like he did with 2008′s THE DARK KNIGHT, he has made every other movie this summer seem like hack amateur derivative waste of film.  INCEPTION is the kind of movie that makes you leave the theater discussing, debating, and most of trying to figure out what in fact did I just see?  And do I understand any of it?

I know I recently declared TOY STORY 3 a “flawless masterpiece.”  Then a few weeks later you see a movie like INCEPTION that just grabs your mind and removes you from your own reality and puts you in a new, exciting, fascinating one and you are left to conclude only that not all movies can be judged by the same criteria.

You will burn calories watching INCEPTION.  The movie builds somewhat slowly.  I think no doubt the opening quarter of the movie is its weakest, but once the viewer learns what exactly the meaning of the title of the film is, Nolan does not hold back the pace at all, but rather goes at maximum storytelling, action, mind bending speed.  Reality in INCEPTION, and place in consciousness, needs to be kept track of on a scorecard.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb in perhaps a not too distant future where people can connect to each other in induced dreaming.  The point is that information can be extracted easier from a person’s dreams than when she/he is awake.  Yet it is not like taking candy from a baby.  This is where the sandbox for INCEPTION starts to get defined and I found it fascinating just what the rules are and how one should operate in these dream invasions.

Only Cobb has any backstory at all, but the other actors are all good enough to make you care about them even after only brief introductions.

I saw this film in IMAX and Hans Zimmer’s score shook my seat on many occasions.  It complimented and heightened the action perfectly.  I heard someone say Nolan was the Hitchcock of his generation, who is of course my favorite director of all time, so I, myself, would not make such a comparison lightly.  However, I would have to agree.  Nolan knows how to tell a complex, enthralling, and original tale.

INCEPTION is the kind of movie that will no doubt reward multiple views.  Try and make at least one of those times in IMAX.

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