Inception Movie Review
Inception Movie Review
The director of Insomnia takes on the stuff of dreams
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Nope, Inception isn't a horror film. Director Christopher Nolan hasn't made a scary movie yet, but something tells me he has a Rosemary's Baby in him somewhere… with a zygote, maybe, from one of the Wachowski Brothers. There would have to be a car chase in it somewhere. In any case, it's been horror.com's policy to review Nolan's other offerings and Inception is no exception. [click for my takes on Memento, Insomnia, The Prestige, and The Dark Knight]
Star Leonardo DiCaprio, on the other hand, is an actor whose films I seldom get to review here. He leans toward straightforward drama, but I do watch them all — in fact, in his last movie before this, Shutter Island, he is playing very much the same character… with much lesser results. While he was somewhat histrionic and at times seemingly at sea as Teddy Daniels, as Dom Cobb in Inception he is also rocked by domestic devastation and a sense of chaotic unreality; yet he carries it off with every right shade of gray in perfect place. DiCaprio slips into Nolan's cold, clinical, calculated and cerebral style like it’s a down comforter. He does it so well that it's not until after the end credits roll that you ask yourself… "why?" (The things he pines for are shown veneer-thin, in retrospect.)
The story is complex — imagine, if you will, The Wizard of Oz as written by Philip K. Dick on sunshine acid and produced by an alternate-reality MENSA member Michael Bay — and I won't repeat it here because as you watch the film the characters will constantly be telling you what it's all about. Normally exposition is the stuff of nightmares for even the semi-literate moviegoer, but Nolan finds ways to make it all go down with a spoonful of sugar… not to mention a shipload of eye candy.
The effects are amazing (the City of Lights is suddenly origami; Joseph Gordon Levitt runs on perpendicular walls; Ellen Page can survive a million-mile fall; mirrors hide whole new worlds), the music is VERY LOUD AND URGENT! BUT REALLY COOL!, the characters are all likeable in an impressive array of ways, and each is portrayed with the care of true craftsman actors (even the very small role played by Pete Postlethwaite is in delicate balance). Wally Pfister's cinematography is look-at-me pretty, and the CGI artists smoothed every seam.
While the individual elements come together to create a genuinely compelling, suspenseful and thought-provoking summer popcorn blockbuster, it's the sum of its parts that's most satisfying: Nolan knows his movie mazes and cinematic cryptograms. In its perfection Inception is unsurprising — it's about what I expected (plus a couple of taps on the snooze bar with a running time of 148 minutes) and that's good enough. I want to see it again, and that's even better.
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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson
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