MOVIE REVIEW: Inception
© A.J. Malouin 2010
(Rating: 7 by A.J. Malouin.)
(See our side-bar page “How We Rate Movies”)
(USA/UK. Directed [and written] by Christopher Nolan.)
If we are to judge movies by their visual content — and there’s a Strong Case to be made that we should! — “Inception” comes off as once of the most visually inventive movies of the year.
For its Star Power, its special effects, and its shoot’em-up action sometimes occurring three levels deep, “Inception” does come off as one of the best movies of its kind.
While it is over-the-top in these categories, it is nevertheless below sea level in several other categories. For all its goodies, “Inception” is therefore a bit disappointing.
Our story? Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is an expert at “dream extraction.” He enters people’s dreams in order to steal their secrets. Okay, we buy that premise.
We have to buy it quickly, however, because we are soon introduced to another premise. Called “inception,” this practice involves going into people’s dreams not to steal something, but to plant something.
“Inception” is infinitely more difficult than “extraction” and is thought by many to be actually impossible.
One man claims he can to it, however. Thank heavens for the women in our audience, that man is the DiCaprio character, Cobb.
Cobb is hired to plant a thought about breaking up an industrial complex in the head of Cillian Murphy’s character, Robert Fischer. The man who hires Cobb is a Japanese industrialist played by Ken Watanabe.
In return for planting the thought, Cobb will be allowed to return to the USA to live with his children. Cobb cannot currently return to the USA because he is wanted there for (supposedly) killing his wife Mal, played with a charming dreaminess by Marion Cotillard.
Ken Watanbe’s character can “fix” that problem with one phone call. Okay, we buy *that*, also.
In order to plant the thought in Fischer, Cobb must first of all assemble a team to create and live in Fischer’s dream, and then must go down into the third level of Fischer’s dreaming. Apparently, this third level is a Very Dangerous Place. Okay, we buy that, also.
The team member hired to create the architecture of the dream is Ariadne, the character played by Ellen Page. Ariadne is the heroine of the project, and the moral center, also, forcing Cobb to disclose to the other team members the secret agenda Cobb has regarding his wife.
Inasmuch as the movie deals with dreams, it offers tons of opportunities for special effects. In one set piece, Cobb and Ariadne are on a dreaming walk through New York City. Cobb causes the metropolis to fold over on itself like some wonderful urban omelet. There is no point to this: Director Nolan has Cobb do it simply because the special effects to do it exist.
In the over-long, noisy, violent denouement of the movie, there are fist-fights and gun fights going on in all three levels of dreaming into which Cobb has taken his team.
The fight in the third, deepest level is reminiscent of a James-Bond movie, with hundreds of ski troopers in a wintery mountain setting and a monastery being blown to pieces in the middle distance.
That’s not enough Action, though. Nolan has also created a gun fight in the second level, and a fist fight in a cantilevered hotel hallway in the first level.
Nolan’s cameras rush has back and forth through all three of these levels with a hectic special-effects pace that indicates he thinks a simple blow to the head is no fun at all. “Look at everything I can do!” Nolan seems to be screaming at his audience.
Further? He does so for sooooo long that none of the fights, in none of the levels can do much to sustain audience interest. Nolan has just crammed tooooo much special effects into a story line that is way-complicated and overly long.
Michael Caine enters several scenes in his usual winning fashion, playing Cobb’s father, the man who got Cobb started in his career. Yours Truly wanted to see more of Caine in this movie.
The love story between Cobb and his wife Mal is an incredibly tender and sad one that gets pounded down by all the gunfire. This love story involves dreaming and Cobb’s first experiments with “inception.” It’s a story that, with a slight bit of enhancement, could have been made into a strong movie on its own merits.
For its stars, special effects, and Action, “Inception” offers an over-the-top experience. Better it would have been, however, if the filmmakers had practiced a wee bit of extraction on the length and breadth of topics through which this movie dances pell-mell and helter-skelter..
[Send your comments to <50films@malouin.us > and we’ll publish them here. —Ed.]
(2 hr 28. Rated PG-13 in the USA for sequences of violence and action throughout. In English, Japanese, and French, with some subtitles. With Leonardo DiCaprio as Cobb, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Arthur, Ellen Page as Ariadne, Tom Hardy as Eames, Ken Watanabe as Saito, Dileep Rao as Yusuf, Cillian Murphy as Robert Fischer, Tom Berenger as Peter Browning, Marion Cotillard as Mal, Pete Postlethwaite as Maurice Fischer, Michael Caine as Miles, Lukas Haas as Nash, and Tai-Li Lee as Tadashi.)