After months of secrecy surrounding his latest cinematic offering, Christopher Nolan gives the world Inception, his follow up to the critically acclaimed Dark Knight.
Inception focuses on Dominic Cobb, a professional thief who strikes where you are most vulnerable – your dreams. Here, your greatest secrets can be stolen, without you even knowing if the dream was real.
After a botched job in which Cobb and his team are rumbled and caught by their “mark”, a businessman named Saito, they discover it was just an audition to take part in a risky assault on the subconscious. Saito wants the son of his business rival to have the idea to break up his father’s empire when he dies, ending their monopoly on an industry which if continued will mean the end of Saito’s company.
From here on in, it’s best not to reveal how they go about their fiendish plot as its complexity and length will bore and ruin expectations of the film without even seeing it.
Inception plays out like a heist movie, which is essentially what Cobb’s profession is - but he can’t do it alone. Think Oceans 11 but with more fisty cuffs and less of Brad Pitt eating. While DiCaprio does well to carry the film himself with flawless effort, it is his supporting cast that deserve more praise. Without them, Inception would have felt bland and less involving.
Assisting Cobb is Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) the impeccably dressed “point man” and scout for information on potential marks. Ariadne (Ellen Page) is the group’s youngest cohort and receives the role of “architect”, making her responsible for creating the dreamscapes which the mark will enter and be duped. Eames (Tom Hardy) is the dapper English gentleman with the role of the “forger” and has the ability to take on multiple physical appearances in order to gain trust and information from the mark.
Some of Inceptions most memorable moments come through the interactions of Arthur and Eames. For a perfectionist, Arthur seems foolish to always rise to Eames ridicule and baiting. His English charm is probably what earned Eames the gift of Inceptions best line, commenting on Arthur’s lack of firearm imagination.
One thing Inception is not short on is mind melting special effects. With the premise of the film being that in dreams, anything and everything seems to be a possibility - huge CGI landscapes give a glimpse at the tools of which these dream hackers have at their disposal. A formidable arsenal to anyone who doesn’t happen to be Freddy Kruger.
CGI also lends its artificial hands to creating some of the most phenomenal fight sequences since The Matrix. Three hundred and sixty degree spinning corridor fights make bullet time from The Matrix look so last millennium.
Inception seems to draw many comparisons to films such as The Matrix. Although instead of invading a virtual world where pain, emotions and fatality occur through a über futuristic type of augmented reality via sod off big and pointy USB cables, a little wrist strap and a few sleeping pills gain you access to the dream world. Here, pain, emotions and fatality can all cause havoc to your sub conscious.
Christopher Nolan has managed to follow up The Dark Knight with a far more edgy, gripping and intelligent film that is a pleasant change from the current cinema line up of sequels, adaptations from other media and terrible remakes of classics, proving that an intelligent film does haven’t to be an account of events in our history.
Inception is a modern masterpiece of film making and shows much promise for Christopher Nolan and no doubt sets the expectation bar for Batman Three so high you need a telescope to see it all the way in the Sea of Tranquillity.
A no holds barred, adrenaline rush of a film that entertains in fantasy whilst also indulging in philosophical ideas of how easily the human mind can be twisted and used unethically and immorally without ever knowing anything has happened. The films teeters on being able to tell what is real and what is imagination and the films finale does nothing but make you want to jump out of your cinema seat in a mix of rage, satisfaction and praise for creating a movie so thick with tension and intelligence such an ending is justified for a stupendous piece of cinema.
Is this the future we see before us? Turning up late for work and being strapped into a device so your boss can tell if you really did have laryngitis for the last week, or be able to find in the dreamscape of your subconscious a return flight ticket to Amsterdam, a receipt for £1000 exchanged into Euros and a suspicious amount of red tinted light befalling doorways. We will have to see.
Written in participation for the Uniformed Unicorn Film Club
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