THE BASIC idea of Christopher Nolan’s Inception is simple—it has to be for that kind of budget. Led by Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a sort of Impossible Mission Force, working for a Japanese trillionaire (Ken Watanabe), descends into the sleeping subconscious of the plutocrat’s young rival (Cillian Murphy), using technology that allows them to design dreamscapes. Because of the complexity of this operation, the team is forced to create dreams within dreams, and each deeper dream takes place in an exponentially larger time frame. A false move could get the men locked up in an unreal, self-created prison for decades or even longer.
The film is audacious and frequently thrilling, especially when Nolan folds Paris in on itself and Escherizes interior spaces. It’s visionary filmmaking, uncommon at this scale, with neither the mawkishness of What Dreams May Come or the spiritual horse feathers of the Matrix trilogy. The downside comes with the action scenes: shootouts in a rainy L.A., the gunmen all symbols of the subconscious protecting itself. If these dreamers can dream anything, why are they dreaming of a Michael Mann movie? Why do these wonderlands look essentially like $500-a-night hotels and endless financial districts? Money, and Nolan must have a lot of it, changes everything.
Inception
PG-13; 148 min.
Opens July 16
