Inception (2010)
By: Christopher Nolan (director, writer)
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Marion Cotillard
In a world where technology exists to enter the human mind through dream invasion, a highly skilled thief is given a final chance at redemption which involves executing his toughest job till date, inception.
Once upon a time, Christopher Nolan made a movie called Memento. It was complex and sharp, engaging and memorable. It was like nothing we’d ever seen before, which is no mean feat in the film industry. At some point, though, Nolan started to imbue his films with not so much a signature as auteuristic ego. I wasn’t keen on Batman Begins and continue to think The Dark Knight is one of, if not the single most overrated film of the last ten years. Well, until now.
Crazy as it may seem, I really wanted to like Inception. I remained militantly spoiler-free and tried to keep my anticipation somewhere in the reasonable range between my general dislike for Nolan’s more recent work and the pervasive, glowing praise for the film. I will say at the front that you may very likely enjoy it, simply by virtue of that fact that so very many people have.
Me, though? I think it’s a top-heavy, egocentric, convoluted snoozefest.
The first hour plodded along while Nolan spoon-fed me contrived exposition to make sure I understood all of the completely irrational concepts the film is based on. This gave me plenty of time to contemplate and successfully predict both big reveals about an hour ahead of schedule, which naturally left me extremely disgruntled after it was over, as I’d been hoping for at least something moderately clever and surprising in the end game.
This film could have been so much better had it been simplified. There were too many characters without any real development, too much shit going on that was, ultimately, not that necessary to the story. The whole thing was just heavy, as if Nolan felt he could prove how very smart he is if he just kept piling bullshit on top of bullshit on top of bullshit. So, you know, if his goal was to create a bullshit onion, it worked. As for me, I hope I never have to sit through two and a half hours of anything that annoying ever again.
I too was underwhelmed by this movie. I liked it, but every time someone tells me it’s the best movie they’ve seen in years, I kind of want to tell them to go to the movies more often.