Review: “Inception”

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe, Pete Postlethwaite, Tom Berenger, Dileep Rao, Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard

Director: Christopher Nolan

Run Time: 2 hours, 30 minutes

[rating: 4.5/5]

You can easily sum this one up with one sentence: Christopher Nolan does it yet again.  Long before he saved the Batman franchise, Nolan was known for his mind bending thriller Memento, which is easily one of my favorite movies.  Nolan returns to his old stomping grounds with Inception, a crime thriller taking place deep within the recesses of dreams.

There’s really no easy way to review this movie, not without giving it away.  And we’ve all noticed by now how much trouble I have with reviewing good things, but Inception is easily the best movie I’ve seen in a long while.  Nolan crafts a mesmerizing work that sucks in the viewers without ever getting too confusing, though it does beg to be watched multiple times.  Furthermore, a cast of some of today’s greatest and most underrated actors turn in first class performances here.

What’s bad is few and far between.  My only complaint is that Inception, unlike Nolan’s Memento and The Prestige, doesn’t really make the viewer earn the surprises.  The film’s twists and hidden plots are usually fairly obviously handed to the viewer, which is a bit of a disappointment, especially when you consider all the secrets you could uncover on repeat viewings of Nolan’s previous films.  However, in spite of this minor flaw, Inception is a film I could not more highly recommend.  It’s a solid, well crafted thriller that pulls in the viewer, but takes it’s time so that you won’t get lost in it’s maze of intrigue and surprise.  A classy, almost gentleman’s version of The Matrix, this is probably going to stand out as the top movie of the summer.