Inception Review

Note: I've left out many details (and whole characters) in this review so there isn't much as far as spoilers go, but if you don't want to know anything about the plot then don't read beyond the first paragraph.

I just got back from watching Christopher Nolan's most recent mind bending creation and his trademark complex story telling skills are still as acute as ever. Inception runs a bit over two and half hour, but it felt like a thrill-filled five. Nolan manages to pack so much into a plot that builds up speed until it takes off into a sprint before it literally falls off the edge. The acting is very sharp; many of the actors, including Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ellen Page, draw you in and make the world believable with virtually no back story. And the accompaniment of Hans Zimmer's score moves with the action, making you hold your breath in dramatic anticipation.

The story revolves around the concept of a technology that allows people to share and construct dreams. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, a man hired to extract secrets from a mind through dreams. Saito, played by Ken Watanabe, instead hires Cobb to plant an idea in Robert Fischer's (Cilian Murphy) mind.

The film begins like a heist movie, which in many ways it is, gathering a crew and setting up a plan. And like a heist movie the characters are fleshed out as they try to accomplish their respective tasks, but the aspects of the dream setting add a complexity to each new revelation. Cobb's emotional journey parallels Fischer's as they go deeper into there own minds and the dream makes it more difficult to determine which is really real and which is the fabricated real.