Review Inception

In the year 1994, Quentin Tarantino rocked the world of cinema presenting his overly celebrated Pulp Fiction. He was considered a master genius filmmaker being able to pull off street crime thriller in a bravura of more than 150 minutes of joyful entertainment. In the year 2000, Christopher Nolan came on the map with Memento, a reverse backward psychological thriller that was a genuine first time idea of his. Of course, being an independent film with a rather laid back story, it did not enjoy the same kind of celebration Pulp Fiction had. Nevertheless, like said before, it put the dual citizenship writer-director Nolan on the map of Hollywood visionary filmmaker. With great resumes such as Insomnia, The Prestige and two batman movies rebooted from his vision of Batman with David S. Goyer, Nolan was able to convince Warner Brothers Studio to film one of his own penned original script over the past 8 years.

Inception, though being original, was heavily adapted from alternate-virtual reality films like The Matrix, Thirteen Floor, Dark City, and Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind. It is the notion that the reality surrounding us might not be real that drives Nolan to come up with a story about dream engineering. Leonardo Dicaprio plays Dom Cobb the master extractor in a heist whose target is to steal ideas instead of money or jewelries. He accepts a project from Saito (Ken Watanabe) to plan inception of ideas as opposed to steal one to Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy) to earn his leeway back home in The U.S. He then assemble a team for the operation consists of the point man Arthur (Joseph Gordon Levitt), the impersonator Eames (Tom Hardy), the architect Aridane (Ellen Page), and the chemist Yusuf (Dileep Rao). During the operation, Cobb was distracted by an enemy inside of his own subconscious that endangers the accomplishment of the task.

After I watch the movie, I was almost sure that no one short than a NASA system analyst will be able to articulate the plot with full detail. I did not even realized what actually going on until the second viewing. I always have this kind of consensus toward any Nolan’s films. The first time you see the film, you will be amazed by it, but the second time is paying attention to detail. This was also the case for Batman Begins, Memento, The Prestige and even The Dark Knight. The movie is 148 minutes long and it does not feel that long as the direction of the auteur will keep you glued to edge of your seat assuming you still maintain your interest to the plot structure rather than just explosive action sequence or any other jaw dropping and eyes popping visual images that the filmmaker is offering to the audiences. The movie also employ old-school movie making technique combined with modern process. This is movie making at its best. But of course the most important element should always be the screenplay which Nolan scores a big triumph this time. Having said that, I actually think that this is not a masterpiece in the same way as The Dark Knight was. Though it feels genuine (it actually isn’t 100%) with the grand, infinite, and massive scale combined with all elements necessary for a modern Hollywood summer blockbuster, it really lacked the attachment of the character to how the story flows that really a minor complaint I have for this movie. If you remember The Dark Knight, you remember how Heath Ledger embodies Joker like no one else could play him. I thought Leonardo Dicaprio’s performance could easily be replaced by say George Clooney or Brad Pitt. Still his performance is a good one but too often he is engaged with a dark role that the versatility of his true acting capability cannot be appropriately and fully measured anymore. When all is said and done, while Inception is not a masterpiece, it is still a very good science fiction thriller with a very good story which I very much hoped that Hollywood will embrace for years to come and trash away any Transformers-like junks.


“Inception” a Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures releases is rated PG-13 for action violence. Three and a half stars out of four (A-)