Inception written and directed by Christopher Nolan (2010)
16 July 2010With Christopher Nolan I either love or hate his films, but this trailer has had me really excited for some time. Still I was a bit wary. I refuse to see Insomnia because I love the original too much, and I absolutely hated the Prestige (I mean the ending was just painfully bad), but Memento, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight were all phenomenal. Anyway, it has been in the 100′s in Los Angeles, so Kelly opted to go to a show in the morning on release day of this to beat the heat, and I have to say this film blew me away, easily the best film so far this year, and some of the best special effects I have ever seen. This movie is phenomenal and a must see, and I would love to see it again right now! The soundtrack by Hans Zimmer is perfect, and DiCaprio is the best I have seen him (he finally seems grown up and after this I would love to see him as the Ridler in the next Batman film! Actually everyone is great here (well Ellen Page is nothing special really, she is cute enough, but doesn’t bring too much depth). This is an awesome look and take on the world of dreams, and is not only a great psychological thriller, but Nolan proves he could easily do an amazing Bond style action film too. And I am really still blown away by the effects, which are absolutely seamless, except when they are not supposed to be. Inception is easily one of the best films of the year, and an absolute must see! See it now, and see it again and again!
A man is found washed up on a beach carrying only a pistol and a small metal top. He is brought to the japanese household here and the old man who is the master (Ken Watanabe). The man’s name is Cobb, and he is there to help the old man Saito remembers something very important to them both.
At an earlier time we see Cobb in along with his team consisting of Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his architect (who designs the dream worlds they project into) named Nash (Lukas Hass). They are on a train, while jacking into the dream of Japanese the young Japanese industrialist Saito. They are actually in a dream within a dream, which starts to go bad when a woman from Cobb’s past named Mal (Marion Catillard) shows up and starts to work with Saito against the team. The end up in the second dream, but Saito can tell that the details that Nash has created are not correct, so he knows he is still dreaming, and admits that this is in fact an audition for this team. He does not want them to do the normal and steal information from someones dream, but do an inception, which is to plant a dream into someone’s mind so that they think it is their own. Cobb and his team try to run, but they are betrayed by Nash and led to Saito. Saito takes away the traitor and gets Cobb to agree to try to do an inception in exchange for Saito helping Cobb with his legal issues in his home of the united states, where he can no longer return to see his young children. Arthur doesn’t even think an inception can be done, but Cobb says it can, because he has done it before.
REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS...
Cobb goes to assemble the team he will need. He heads to the middle east to recruit Eames (Tom Hardy) who is a forger who can assume other identities in the dream world. It is hard though, as Cobb is being chased by the company that hired him to steal info from Saito, but he is saved by Saito.
Then Cobb heads to Paris, where his Father in law Miles (Michael Caine) teaches Architecture. Cobb asks for his most talented architect to help him create dream world, and Miles lets him meat his best student Ariadne (Ellen Page). Cobb has Ariadne go into the shared dream world, showing her the ropes and the rules. How you should not create real places, but places based on real places, always new, and how the more you change things the more the people in the dream, that are projections of the psyche of the dreamer will revolt against you and become actively violent. And how dyeing will wake you up from a dream. And about having a totem, and object with a balance that only the dreamer knows, to tell the difference between dream and reality. Ariadne leaves, but can’t help but come back, because dream architecture is so different from real architecture, you can make anything. So Arthur starts giving her lessons in tricks to make recursive loops and the like.
The last member of the team to be assembled is Yusuf (Dileep Rao). He is a chemist who has perfected chemicals to keep dreamers in a dream state, and that will help to achieve 3 levels of dream state. He has a group of people who come to him to dream every day, because without the shared dream tech they can no longer dream, and the dream world to them has become their reality.
The target of the inception is the son of the dying industrialist Maurice Fisher (Peter Postlewaite), Robert (Cillian Murphy). Saito wants the son to break up and sell his father’s company, otherwise the company will achieve total energy dominance and drive Saito out of business. Their only chance to do this is when Robert is flying to Los Angles got his father’s funeral. Saito buys the airline so they can get the rest of first class and the stewardess on their side, and Saito is going along to see if they did it, and if they suceed he will make a call and have Cobb’s crimes cleared, otherwise Cobb will land and spend the rest of his life in jail.
The team stars training. Eames goes undercover at the Fisher company so he can steal the identity of Maurice’s right hand Peter Browning (Tom Berenger).
Ariadne starts designing mazes and the 3 worlds they will delve into, while Yusef works on his chemicals to put them in really deep. Ariadne begins to suspect something is wrong with Cobb as she sees Yusef putting him to sleep in the dream machine by himself, and he will act as an architect himself.
Ariadne goes into the dream with Cobb and finds that Cobb is breaking all the rules and has created a world of his own memories populated by Mal, who is his dead wife, who he is blamed for killing. And Cobb’s memories of Mal are a danger that are going against them, and why Cobb can’t see the mazes that Ariadne is creating, because Mal may go against them.
They go into Robert’s dream, but in the first level find that Robert has had training against dream stealing, so his projections are armed and dangerous, and going against them. They manage to take Robert, but Saito is shot, and they are in grave danger.
And they learn that they can’t just die to wake up, because of the drug they are on they will be drivel to limbo, leaving their body a brainless husk, so they must live.
They have Eames pose as Peter Browning who claims to have been kidnapped a day before, and tells them they want the combination to Robert’s father’s safe which has a second will in it, that claims to want Robert to break up his father’s company and be his own man.
Yusef drives them in a van, while they go down another level into Arthur’s dream in a hotel, where time goes slower and Saito can last longer, and Cobb makes gamble to pretend to be Robert’s own brain’s protection, helping him from outside attack. They convince Robert, and get him to go deeper into dream, pretending to go into Peter’s head, but really doing another level into Robert’s own head.
While the dreamers go, Arthur protects them, and has a good deal of trouble, because he must make a kick to wake them at the same time that Yusef wakes them in the next level, but they miss their first kick, which is the van going off a bridge, and because of that in Arthur’s level they are in zero G (falling in the van) so he must do battle with Robert’s armed facets and get everyone into an elevator so he can kick to wake them up when the van hits the water.
In the 3rd level it is a typical Bond setup with an armed fortress in the snow, and they must go in, but can’t go the full route, because they don’t have time, so they must go in through a shortcut.
Things go badly when Mal appears and shoots and kills Fisher, driving him into Limbo, and Saito dies too, also driving him into limbo.
So the only way now is for Ariadne and Cobb to go into limbo after them, and have Eames shock Peter back to life as they kick out to being awake.
We learn that in fact Mal and Cobb had gone to limbo before, and had created an entire world there, and lived 50 years, growing old, but Cobb eventually found playing god to be not fulfilling and wanted to go back to the real world and to their real children, but Mal did not want to go. So Cobb planted the simple idea that this was not the real world and the only way to get to the real world was to die. So they both died in limbo and made it back to reality, but Mal was not the same, and found that she did not believe that the real world was in fact real, and wanted Cobb to kill himself with her, so they could get back to the “real” world. The Inception had worked too well and changed Mal completely. She went to a lawyer and signed papers saying Cobb was threatening her, to force him to suicide with her, and then she jumped off a building, killing herself and forcing Cobb to go on the run.
In Limbo Ariadne and Cobb are confronted by Mal, but he is over her death now, and he agrees to stay with her in limbo if it will get Ariadne and Robert out, but Ariadne isn’t having any of it and shoots Mal, and she, or her projection from Cobb’s mind dies in his arms. Ariadne leaves with Robert, but Cobb stays as he must get Saito or he will be arrested when they land.
We return to the beginning where Cobb has come to get the old man Saito to remember the real world and to leave Limbo.
Robert in the dream is awakened on the 3rd level and goes into the vault, seeing his father’s will, and the inception works as he comes to the conclusion that the father wanted him to be his own man, and do his own thing and not be a shadow of his father.
They all awaken alright on the plane and Cobb re-enters the US without incident.
Cobb goes to his house and sees his children and their faces for the first time since he left, but he spins his top, his totem, which was Mal’s and it does not fall, like it would in the dream, though we do see it wobble before the screen cuts to black, so ti could be a dream, or it could be reality.
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Wow, awesome movie! Nolan needs to write more of his own films. This is the best take on dreaming I have yet to see, and an incredibly well done movie all the way around. A summer action blockbuster that makes you think! I really wish all blockbusters could be this well done, this good and this thought provoking!
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