What kind of a pop-culture blog would we be if we didn't take a second to look at the summer's biggest movie? I feel it is our obligation, nay our duty, to dissect Christopher Nolan's latest foray into cinema. Chances are you've seen the movie by now. Or heard people talking about it. Well here's my opinion, which really, is the only opinion that matters.
The film certainly holds all of the confusing themes of Nolan movies in the past. Cyclical story-telling, questioning of reality, dead wives. It really feels more like a follow up to previous Nolan flicks Memento and The Prestige than to 2008's Dark Knight.
Ah but you make Earth-Shaking Super-Hero Block Buster and it casts a long pale over the rest of your career. Take a look at Christian Bale. Pre-Batman, Bale was a well respected dramatic actor known for his complete transformations for roles and delivering amazing performances in films like American Psycho and The Machinist. His post-Batman roles? The decidedly popcorn fair of Terminator and Public Enemies.
[An aside: Last year my esteemed Broken Pencil colleague and I were closely examining the poster for Inception, CONVINCED it was a Red Herring and that it was really going to be a Batman follow up. With Leo in the role of The Riddler]
But Nolan rejects this notion. He's going to make the movie that he wants to make. So what if it takes liberally from Nolan's pre-Batman work? At least he's stealing from himself.
The film opens up with Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) washing up on a beach, apparently having survived the events of Titanic, in a "what's going on here?" opening so present in the Nolanverse. From there he and his partner Arthur (Joseph Goron Levitt) are hired by an unscrupulous Japanese business man (Ken Wantanabe) to enter the dreams of a competitor (Cillian Murphy) and alter his mind. They must assemble a team of misfits to help them complete the task.
At it's heart, Inception is a caper flick. The trailers describe it as "James Bond meets The Matrix", but I feel that "Ocean's 11 meets Scanners" would be a more apt description.
The ensemble cast puts in some brilliant performances, including a cameo by Michael Caine and Cillian Murphy playing his first non-creepy-guy role as the target of Leo's plot. The only weak link in the film's cast is Ellen "I was the girl from Juno" Page.
The movie isn't without it's flaws. After The Matrix, I became very sick of the "Is what's really real really real?!?" plot device. Nolan has played with this before, first in Memento and then again in The Prestige. He needs to hurry up and solve his own existential crisis and leave that old chestnut of a plot device at home.
But leaving my personal biases aside, I have to say that Inception is certainly worth the price of admission. Heck, Joseph Gordon Levitt's zero G fight scene is worth it. Go. See it. See it now.
[Aside #2: The only person on the planet who has a bigger man-crush on Josephy Gordon Levitt than me, is my esteemed Broken Pencil colleague]
~Sammo
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