Henry Saw: Inception

The last great hope for the summer of 2010 is is here...



In his new movie Inception Christopher Nolan wastes one of the best casts of the decade. Despite setting the movie inside people's dreams, Nolan fails to take advantage of the fact that anything is possible inside a dream, and does not astonish the viewer with his imagery. The film's final scene, unlike the fantastic endings to both Memento and The Prestige, felt useless and irrelevant. Still, I really liked Inception, and think it's the second best film to come out of Hollywood this year.

While the summer season is still not technically over, we still have things like Dinner for Schmucks, The Other Guys, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World coming out, it does feel like Inception was the last major release of the season. For many, following the incredible success of The Dark Knight, and an effective marketing campaign, Inception was the most anticipated film of the year. I was not as excited as some, but I was hopeful, as I know Christopher Nolan can make a movie and the cast was filled with great actors. Now, after seeing the film twice, I think I'm finally ready to write my review.

Let's start with what's great about Inception. This is a expertly put together movie. For the entire 148 minute run-time I never checked my watch, something I did frequently during the last third of The Dark Knight, and was thoroughly engrossed throughout. The basic idea behind Inception, breaking into someone's dreams and stealing or implanting ideas, is so smart that it's shocking no one has done it before. Though the film tonally resembles The Matrix, Dark City, and others, it is a surprisingly original film. The first half of Inception is filled with exposition, but because all the ideas were so intelligent and innovatory, it never bothered me. Nolan fully immerses us into the world of Inception and we are hooked from scene one.



The performances are uniformly...good. DiCaprio, as Cobb, proves that he is truly a star capable of carrying a movie. While I think he was a bit stronger in this year's similarly themed Shutter Island, he's solid here, and sells all the hokey dialogue he's given. The rest of the cast is given far too little to do, but because they are all so talented, they elevate the poor roles they are given. Ellen Page finally plays an adult as the awkwardly named Ariadne, but she's given nothing to do but get things explained to her, and she's not given a chance to show off her charm. Michael Caine shows up in two scenes to just be...Michael Caine. Marion Cotillard plays a key role as DiCaprio's wife and distinguishes herself in a one-note role. She is terrifying, sexy, tragic, and compelling. It's her best performance, by far, since her Oscar-winning turn in La Vie En Rose. The real standouts, however, are a trio of under-appreciated actors.

First is Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Red Eye) who plays Robert Fischer, Jr., the man who is being "incepted". He's actually given the most emotional work to do in the film, and nails every scene, and proves he has one of the most interesting faces working in movies today. Next is Joseph Gordon-Levitt who plays Arthur, Cobb's right hand man, and the star of the best action sequence of the film. His gravity defying fight scene in the hotel hallway is easily the highlight of the movie. It's just unfortunate that Nolan does not let Gordon-Levitt have any fun, outside of one moment with Ellen Page, as he's an incredibly charming performer. The biggest flaw in the acting in Inception on the whole is that everyone is forced to be so bloody serious. The one person who cracks a smile, and who therefore stole the show, is a little known English actor named Tom Hardy. Robbing every scene he's in, Hardy goes mano-a-mano with DiCaprio, relegates Gordon-Levitt to sidekick material, and rules his big action sequence. He's nearly worth the price of admission by himself.



Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention what are, perhaps, the film's strongest features: the score and the editing. Hans Zimmer's score is seriously the best I've heard in years. It combines the moodiness of The Dark Knight (also by Hans Zimmer with James Newton Howard) while doing a better job heightening the action scenes than that score did. The editing, done by Lee Smith, is even more masterful. I can't imagine how hard it must have been to cut this film into a coherent piece, much less an entertaining one, and Smith is my very early favorite to win the Oscar for Best Editing.



So what doesn't work? Well it boils down to just two things...but they're major. The first is that that the film is so cold. Nolan has yet to make a movie that can really connect on an emotional level with the audience. Inception, for all it's conceptual brilliance, never quite clicks with the viewer on anything but an intellectual level. It's interesting as a puzzle, as a spectacle, and as a "blockbuster", but I never cared about the outcome of the film. The other main issue I had with Inception was that the ending, though eternally debatable, was sort of cheap. It did not not feel like a reveal, or a "this changes everything" sort of ending...it just felt like Christopher Nolan wanted to mess with us.

I'm still surprised at how much I enjoyed the movie given I was never fully invested in the plot or the characters. I was so impressed by the craft at hand, and the riddles Nolan presents, that the things I usually demand from a movie were not as important. Inception is sort of a logical amalgamation of Memento, The Prestige, and The Dark Knight, and its highly pleasurable to see how Nolan uses similar themes and techniques throughout his career. Inception lacks Memento's fantastic plot construction, and doesn't have any performance that can come close rivaling Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, and is just not as good a movie as The Prestige...but it's still a fantastic time at the cinema. I can't wait to re-watch it and try to figure it out again.

Grade: A-

Best Scene: That hall-way fight...