Inception Review

This weekend I finally got to see Inception, a film I have been waiting to see since it started being advertised. The film was made by director Christopher Nolan, the man who brought us The Dark Knight and Memento. The film features a strong ensemble cast of very talented young actors. Inception also had some of the best visuals I have ever seen. The cinematography was top-notch excellent and the visual effects gave the film its dreamlike qualities that were surreal, yet subtle, never becoming so big and bright that they become a spectacle on to themselves.


That being said I cannot shake the thinking that Christopher Nolan is fucking with me. The plot to this film is almost unreviewable; seriously I do not know what to say. Inception presents this twisted rat’s nest of a narrative about a man haunted by the death of his wife. The man also happens to be a professional thief who breaks into dreams and pulls heists on their memories and sells the secure information to the highest bidder. The job is made difficult in the opening scene when the vengeful sub-conscious ghost of his wife endangers every mind heist the characters embark on. He is a fugitive because the US authorities think he killed his wife. His last chance to see his kids again is doing this one last job for some generic rich guy. The job involves implanting an idea in the mind of a business competitor; this is where the title of the film comes from. This technique is largely thought to be impossible, only Cobb has the skill to do it. Already this is starting to feel like every heist movie ever made. It hits all the genera cliches making this feel less like a psychological thriller and more like the weirdest Ocean’s Eleven sequel ever. That is the closest thing to a coherent plot this film has. After that it is nothing more than a convoluted series of ill-paced flash backs and time jumps. Another problem I had was that it spent a good portion of the film explaining how the dream technology worked. I hate it when sci-fi movies do that, do they really think the audience gives a fuck how the dream Mcguffan works? Did we really need all those scenes explaining that weird sedative and how effective it was? It had no impact on the story as a whole and just padded the film for time. Also, why in the hell did Cobb agree with generic billionaire guy to and let him go along for the heist? Why was his presence necessary other than to become a hindrance later?

I honestly do not understand why this film is getting so much praise. What was so ground breaking? It was not the themes because I can think of several movies that approached the question of if or not our world was real of some kind of dream. It was not the character’s relationship with his wife because that story was better when it was called “What Dreams may come.” This movie felt not at all original, in fact nothing about it was. Nolan cannibalized themes from his own film Memento while flagrantly ripping off films like What Dreams may Come, Cell, Dark City, A Clockwork Orange and The Matrix Trilogy. All those movies had the themes of Inception or had similar visual and all are better than Inception. Inception is a great example of something that fails to be greater than the sum of its parts. Yes the actors were wonderful in this film and yes the cinematography was great, but several points in the film made me think about when I saw them happen in better films. Those films had coherent plots, with narratives that make sense and do not read like the ramblings of a crazy person of his meds.