Much like Christopher Nolan’s previous film, The Dark Knight, his latest motion picture foray arrives in theaters with an avalanche of buzz and hype.  And much like The Dark Knight, don’t believe it all, because Inception isn’t the end all-be all mother of all movies.  It’s not as good as the last Batman film, but it’s close, and it’s not as cool and mindbending as it acts.

Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) lives in exile.  His wife is deceased, and his only contact with his children are telephone calls and sending them gifts by way of their grandfather, Miles (Michael Caine), Dom’s father-in-law.  The only thing Dom has left is his job, which is entering into other people’s dreams and extracting information for his clientele.  He also tutors businessmen how to protect themselves from people like him.

The job to extract secrets from Japanese businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe) fails miserably, but Saito turns around and hires Cobb and his team for a different kind of mission.  Saito wants to implant an idea into someone’s mind.  As everyone tries to explain to Saito, inception is a lot more difficult than extraction, and it’s never been done.  Cobb says it has, and he was the one to do it.  It went bad, but he says it can be done.  Cobb only agrees to it because the powerful Saito can make it possible for him to return home to his children.

What Saito wants is the dissolution of a rival energy company owned by Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), who just inherited the empire from his recently deceased father.  Saito wants to implant the idea that Fischer needs to break the company up and sell off the giant.  Planting an idea is like planting a seed, it starts at almost nothing and has to grow, making the person believe it was their idea all along.  The risk, though, is worth it for Cobb if he can return home.

So Cobb assembles his team, recruiting a new architect, Ariadne (Ellen Page), to design and build the dream worlds.  Cobb is a master architect himself, but he can no longer build the dream worlds because of his time spent in them too long.  If one spends too much time in the dreaming, they can lose their minds.  Cobb’s dead wife haunts his dreams, and she is able to sabotage his missions.  If he builds the dreams, she will know her way around them, thus the need for a different architect.

Inception sounds complicated, but if you watch the movie, and pay attention, you won’t become lost.  You may not understand some of what happens, but it’s more or less easy to follow.  What I don’t get about the movie is that it seems too logical, and it is, for the most part, too easy to understand.  We’re dealing with dreams here, and it never really becomes too crazy, trippy, or otherworldly.  It’s kind of like James Bond in the X-Men’s Danger Room.

This is a fun movie, and somewhat daring; it goes right up to the line of being great, but doesn’t cross it.  I wanted something a little more daring, something more fearless, something not afraid “to go there”.  It has brains, just not enough guts.

4.5 out of 5
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