Review of Inception (2010) by Alec A — 05 Nov 2014

Christopher Nolan's Inception is about a man named Dom Cobb (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) who knows a very profound skill. He knows how to create dreams and he knows how to steal secrets from minds. His wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) invested herself in these sorts of things as well.

When you are in the dream world you can wake yourself up by committing suicide. Well all of this experimenting with what you can do in dreams messed with Mal's mind and caused her to be possessed by the idea that, even when she was back in the real world, she was still dreaming and that, in order to wake up and come back to reality, she had to kill herself. So she eventually did. But the problem was, she very carefully took steps to ensure that, to the public eye, it looked as if she was murdered and that her murderer was Cobb. Why would she do such a thing you ask? She did what she did because she wanted her husband to commit suicide with her so that they could be together in the "real" world again.

Cobb does not end up committing suicide with his wife and chooses to run from the law instead. In order to support himself, he accepts jobs that require him to steal secrets from the minds of various targets. One day, a man Cobb tried to steal secrets from approaches him with a job offer. This man (Ken Watanabe) wants him to pull off the opposite of what he (Cobb) usually does. Saito (the man) wants him to plant an idea in a target's mind. In return, he promises to make a phone call that will enable Cobb to return home to his children in America without the authorities arresting him.

All of the actors did a wonderful job of playing their parts. Personally, I think the actor who shone the brightest was Tom Hardy who played Eames. Eames served as the main comic relief provider. In second place comes Joseph Gordon-Levitt. His character (Arthur) has a playful rivalry with Eames. Leonardo DiCaprio was convincing as a man haunted by his trying past, Ellen Page does a good job of portraying the nosy architect who constructs the dreams (for a reason that is explained in the movie, Cobb can't create dreams anymore after the death of his wife), and Cillian Murphy adeptly plays Robert Fischer, a man made bitter because his father is disappointed with him.

Something I really liked about this movie was the use of slow motion playback that was used to show the difference in how fast time flies by in the real world compared to the dream world and how fast time flies by in different layers of the dream world. Another thing that was cool was a scene in the movie in which Arthur has a zero-gravity fight with the security of a hotel.

Overall, I would highly recommend Inception to anyone that wants to watch a very thought provoking, intelligent movie that also has lots of action. It is a hard one to understand so you need to have patience and you need to understand that it may take several viewings before you understand the movie completely. Also, when you go to watch the film, read the poem A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe along with it. Love and marriage aren't the only things that go together like a horse and a carriage.