Inception

Released: 2010 Run time: 148 Mins. Director & Writer: Christopher Nolan Rated: PG13

Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Elliot Page, Tom Hardy, Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, and Michael Caine

In the summer of 2010, I sat in a packed theater with one of my best buds. I was highly anticipating the follow up to the director of, at the time, the first two of three Dark Knight films and Memento, which is one of my favorite films of that decade. We walked out of that film with a lot to talk about, like we did after each film we experienced together. This week I revisited the film.

In Inception, Dom Cobb (DiCaprio, Shutter Island) is an extractor, or as he says the most skilled extractor. Extractors are in fact thieves that enter their targets dreams to steal information for profit, hired by corporations and powerful people. In order to pull off these “mind heists” the extractor needs a team of specific individuals. A point man, who finds the jobs and does extensive research on the mark; An Architect, that designs elaborate dreams to bring the mark in to; A forger, who impersonates real personas to manipulate the mark; A chemist, who makes the sedatives used to place and keep those entering the dream state under.

Cobb begins the movie washed ashore on a beach, half conscious. He is found by some soldiers and brought in to an aging man who asks Cobb if he is there to kill him. Cobb has two items on his person that are placed in front of the man: a gun and a spinning top. He sees the top and says that he knows what it is and that it belonged to a man he met in a “half-remembered dream. A man possessed of some radical notions”.

The aging man speaking to Cobb is Saito (Watanabe, Batman Begins), as the transition to a present day conversation with Cobb, Saito and Arthur (Gordon-Levitt, The Dark Knight Rises) as they explain extraction, how it works, with a proposal to train him how to defend himself from such a threat. In truth, hired by Cobol Industries, they are in a dream state within his subconscious to steal secrets from him.

In this first act we see just how skilled Cobb’s team is and how his past trauma and his secrets he hold from his team affect their extractions. Their attempt at extracting confidential documents from Saito fail, thanks to Cobb’s wife Mal (Cottilard, The Dark Knight Rises), who sabotages it by informing Saito.

The team escapes only to be intercepted later by Saito because his Architect Nash (Haas, The Revenant) sells them out. Saito proposes to Cobb the “one last job”. He wants him to attempt a highly impossible Inception: Implanting an idea into someones subconscious. Saito’s biggest competitor is dying and the son, Robert Fischer (Murphy, The Dark Knight) is heir to the empire. Saito wants to implant the idea into Robert to dissolve the company. When Arthur gives the information dump (we have characters throughout the film explaining the hows, whys, and why not’s), explaining the impossibilities of an inception Cobb inserts that it may be possible, but declines the job nevertheless.

Saito lets them go, but as they walk away he asks Cobb, “How would you like to go home? To America? To your children?”. Cobb is unable to set foot on U.S. soil and is separated from his two children, for reasons which are explained later in the film. Saito promises to fix his situation so that he can return home, Cobb agrees. Later, Arthur says again that it cannot be done, to which Cobb says he has done it before. Arthur asks to whom did he do it too, receiving no answer.

“Assemble your team, Mr. Cobb. And choose your people more wisely.”

The gathering of the Cobb’s team involves a lot of traveling, which added a bit to the budget of this film. There first stop is in Paris, where Cobb visits his father-in law and Mentor, Miles (Caine, The Dark Knight Trilogy). Cobb convinces Miles to recruit a new Architect for him, Ariadne (Page, X-Men: Days of Future Past).

Cobb explains to Ariadne what an Architect does, after a test of her abilities. In beautiful fashion, we are shown how the dream state can be manipulated, the limit is your imagination. We are also shown the dangers of changing the landscapes in dreams as the persons subconscious will notice foreign nature in the dream, causing the “projections” to attack.

Next, Cobb goes travels to Mombasa, Kenya for Eames (Hardy, The Dark Knight Rises), the Forger. After an quick foot chase by Cobol Industries operatives, Eames introduces Cobb to a Chemist, named Yusuf (Rao, Avatar), who makes rather unique compounds of sedatives. And along with Saito, as an observer, the team is formed.

Now, when they were extracting from Saito, they created a dream within a dream. With the inception they devised to created 3 levels, which is said to be highly dangerous, highly unstable, but created like a maze, giving them more time before the projections, the defenders of the subconscious, catch up. Each level is also developed to cause an effect.

This last job is their most dangerous. They have to contend with a few wild cards and secrets being kept. And after multiple watches, still am wrestling with that ending.

The main cast is exceptional. One of those directors that goes back to the same well, Nolan has worked with the majority of the main cast before on multiple projects and they have proven why.

The visuals are creative and beautiful . Because the majority of the film is in a dream world, the Architect can create anything they can imagine. Some of Nolan’s best use of practical and CGI effects, in the action scenes as well, are on display in Inception. I refer you to the hotel hallway fight scene, in one of the final Acts or the snowy mountain action scene (Hardy is a Bad-ass!).

The score for Inception is by Genius German composer Hans Zimmer, with numerous awards under his belt. He has been Nolan’s main go to composer for over a decade.

There is much debate around the ending of this movie even today, just they way Nolan wanted. The totem is an object of your choosing that you use to make sure you are not in someones (or your own?) dream. Cobb’s totem belonged to his wife Mal. Or maybe not. Think on that.

Inception is currently available on Amazon Prime Video

In Retrospect ★★★★★