In theaters. Rated R, 140 minutes. Trailer.
Astonishing, amazing, breathtaking. Writer/Director Christopher Nolan's Inception has several instant classic action scenes that demand to be seen on the big screen. The film is a visual marvel from start to finish with a heavyweight score to match. The cast is excellent, especially Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard and Tom Hardy. Unfortunately, the film is not the sum of its amazing parts. The visuals and direction earn a rare A+ while the story and screenplay are B to B+ quality, resulting in the spotty A-. Priest is writing the 'review of record' for DLP on this film, but I know Doc and I will also want to get something down as well. Click below for more on Inception: 
The film follows Cobb (DiCaprio) as he plies his trade of inhabiting and stealing dreams. His 'crew' includes Ellen Page and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, each with a job inside the dreams. Ken Watanabe shows up as an all powerful generic energy executive that promises to reunite Cobb with his children if he can pull off an 'inception', the planting of an idea inside the mind. Obviously Cobb accepts and the film follows this process as the crew moves throu amazing landscape after amazing landscape to accomplish their task.
The film is a joy to watch and the mechanics of the dreams and the inception is very interesting and well thought out. The limitation of the film is that it lacks enough of a soul. I didn't feel like Watanabe's character was developed enough to make me pull for him and against Cillian Murphy and Pete Postlewaithe. The relationship with Cobb's children is obvious, and the film gets closest to being complete through the soulful performance of the always great Marion Cotillard as Cobb's wife.
I need to watch it again to finalize my opinion. The film is refreshingly challenging and leaves you pondering the deepest of concepts. I'll leave it to Priest to more thoroughly explore the multitude of themes in the film.
The snow military scenes and the shifting gravity scenes are among my favorite of the past decade, maybe longer. The visuals reminded me of Kubrick.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Inception - A-
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1 comment:
A for me. Nolan is now responsible for my only 2 A's since 2007. Where the The Dark Knight was a bit messy in the third act structurally, the cross-cutting in Inception during the third act couldn't have been better. Like the murder of the heads of the five families in The Godfather - but lasting 30-40 minutes instead of 5.
There's a great term paper somewhere out there comparing this to Shutter Island.
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