Director Christopher Nolan’s latest film “Inception” had that best-movie-of-the-year-type hype going in. Unfortunately, unlike “The Dark Knight,” “Inception” did not quite live up to that hype.
The film is about Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), who is a master at extraction — stealing secrets while the marks are dreaming. This has made him a fugitive from justice. Now he wants to get back home to the United States, but he needs to pull off one last job — ah, there’s always “one last job” for our tortured protagonists — in order to clear himself of charges and get back.
Cobb’s also a tortured soul, whose wife (Marion Cotillard) is dead. Cobb’s main impetus for getting back to the States is his two children, orphans with their mother dead and their father away.
The film certainly has all the ingredients of an all-time great. The cast is fully loaded — Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy and Michael Caine.
The only problem is that, despite all the acting talent involved, the script ultimately is not that demanding of its cast. Gordon-Levitt and Page perform adequately enough for what their roles called for, but the roles did not call for much.
Gordon-Levitt has proven he has the chops in starring roles in “The Lookout,” “500 Days of Summer” and “Brick.” So why is he just a smooth-talking sidekick? Gordon-Levitt, as Cobb’s pal Arthur, gets plenty of chances to swim through the air in one of the many visually stunning scenes in “Inception,” but he has much less chance to actually emote at any time.
Then there’s Page, who played Ariadne, Cobb’s team’s new architect. The best part of the movie is when Cobb is showing Ariadne the ropes of constructing scenes in dreams. As Ariadne’s mind works, the entire world of “Inception” changes, with countless laws of physics surely being broken in the process. The buildings move from horizontal to vertical, and so do Cobb and Ariadne as they walk. Mirrors are set up to create an endless loop of existence, all to be shattered with the flick of Ariadne’s hand.
Unfortunately this part of the movie ends abruptly, and we focus back on the main action of the movie — the inception. And all Page has to do for the rest of the film is relay expository information in a really quiet manner. And like Gordon-Levitt, there’s no emoting necessary, despite Page’s enormous abilities to do so (see: “Juno,” “The Tracey Fragments,” “Smart People,” “Whip It” and/or “Peacock”).
Perhaps “Inception” would have been a bit more engaging for its entire two-and-a-half hour duration if it would have played a bit more with the conventions of the world of “Inception.” But instead, it took an unfortunate page from one of the worst genres of movies — heist movies. There’s a reason why the “Ocean’s Eleven” movies suck. It’s because it’s a dreadful action movie, whose entire existence is based upon the heist. There’s no character development, and it’s all focused on action, action, action.
The same can be said for “Inception.” Is there really much of a character arc for anyone involved? Taken at its most fundamental level, “Inception” is a math problem to be solved. It’s all about completing the inception and getting back home.
The closest we get to development is DiCaprio’s character, Cobb, but really he does not have some marvelous transformation. Cobb is perhaps the most frustrating one in the whole movie because the viewer can see that Mal (Cotillard) is his downfall, but he just keeps falling into the same Mal trap throughout. And the ending to the film, involving DiCaprio, is immensely cheesy and enough to knock a half-star off the rating alone.
The actual attempt at completing the inception takes seemingly forever — at least 30 minutes to an hour of the second half of the film. After awhile, it gets tiresome to see time moving so slowly. It’s strange too, because the first half of the film has such breakneck pacing, complete with a confusing beginning in medias res.
This review might look like this writer hated “Inception,” but it just goes to show what high expectations there were for the film. The film is actually an enjoyable thrill ride, even if it happens to be flawed. The main problem with “Inception” is that people are touting it as this great thinking man’s movie, when in reality, it is just the best of the beast — the bulky, action-packed blockbuster.
Ultimately “Inception” is confusing and a bit disappointing, probably requiring multiple viewings to completely understand. But, as can probably be guessed, this reviewer did not immediately feel the need to rewatch “Inception” after leaving the theater. And he does not know if he ever will.
