ok my thoughts on Inception:
Summary:
Cobb is a well-skilled psychological hitman who is part of an idea extraction team with Arthur. Saito, a wealthy businessman, convinces Cobb the ultimate deal he cannot refuse, but in return, Cobb needs to inject an idea into Fischer's mind, rather than extract it. Saito's main intention is to eliminate his competition Fischer, and become the #1 company in his particular sector. Cobb and Arthur create a team of an architect(Aridane), chemist(Yusuf), and mind illusionist(Eames) to complete the job.
The team engineers the idea to lead Fischer into a mind maze made up of multiple layers(dreams), where they will generate a false memory to have Fischer believe the injected idea. Things go awry during the job when the team is in the process of injecting the idea into Fischer's mind, causing the team to go through a race against time to complete the job. Along the process, Cobb's secrets buried within his mind play a factor against him completing the job.
Thoughts:
This is a very well done film. I am going to first note that it does have close similarities to the movies Paprika and Solaris. However, Nolan takes bits and pieces of those movies, adds his own ideas into the mix, and creates one thought provoking film.
I feel the structure and process is similar to a previous movie he did Memento, but the difference is he expands the idea tenfold in Inception. Rather than exploring the mind of a man with short term memory, Nolan explores the dream world to the bit, and gives a good explanation to what the human mind does when we enter a dream state. On top of that, in my opinion, his use of character representation was well used and easily comprehensive to the common man.
As for action, there is a considerable amount of action scenes with fight sequences, car chases, and gun battles, but it does not define the movie. What defines the movie is the team's chase to complete what seems to be an impossible job, and along the process revealing the mysteries of the human mind. The beginning of the movie spends some time giving a 101 class on psychological behavior, what we can do with our mind when we are in a dream state, and the advantages and disadvantages of pursing something we create in our minds.
I'm not going to reveal too much to spoil it for some who want to watch it. Overall, it lived up to my expectations. Ok carry on folks.
___________________
|