Review of Inception (2010) by Victor T — 20 Nov 2014

After the massive success of "The Dark Knight", Christopher Nolan wasn't sure if he wanted to return to Gotham City so in the meantime Nolan decided to finally materialize his "dream stealers" concept which had been in an eight year writing process.

We follow Dominick Cobb, a wanted criminal in the USA and an "extractor" (a man who performs corporate espionage by using experimental technology to infiltrate the subconscious of their targets and extract the information need while experiencing shared dreaming). Dom and his partner Arthur find a gigantic business opportunity in a Japanese CEO named Saito, who offers them a gigantic amount of money in exchange of performing an inception (planting an idea in the persons subconscious, instead of stealing it) in his rival´s head. In order to fulfill this "impossible" task, Dom travels around the globe in order to find the perfect team for this ambitious heist.

Since "Memento", Nolan hadn't made a film based on an original concept made by him, not saying his other movies in between are bad (you can read my reviews of each of them) but none of them had that creativity that characterize Nolan´s breakthrough film but all of that changed with "Inception". The film counts with a pretty creative and interesting premise which requires your full attention in the dialog if you want to understand its "complex" story. But originality is not all that "Inception" has to offer, it counts great performances by every single actor on screen, with the greatest being Joseph Gordon Levitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy; Pfister´s cinematography is at his best in this film, an incredible score by Hans Zimmer, intense and memorable scenes, gorgeous action, a clever way of introducing some danger to the dream world, memorable imagery, well executed philosophical themes, jaw dropping CGI, a great and appropriate ending, charismatic characters, a relatable protagonist, intelligent way of merging both the real world and the dream world, probably Nolan´s best directing to date (or at least in my opinion)and a greatly executed mixture of action, sci-fi, heist and even thriller genres. But even with all those incredible elements, "Inception" has one big flaw: The characters, excluding the protagonist, are very underdeveloped, we just know their roles in their inception heist but other than that we don't know anything about them.

"Inception" may be Nolan´s best film to date (certainly his most creative) thanks to its solid premise and the interesting question it creates on the audience. "Inception" is undeniably one of the best sci-fi films in modern cinema and a must see of you were waiting for an original concept.