After The Dark Knight became one of the top summer movies of all time, and one of my personal favorites, everyone’s focus went to Christopher Nolan and what he would do next. The man has certainly developed his own style and Inception, his latest, just cements his position as the most interesting director working today. Here is a director that can make a smart, powerful and entertaining summer blockbuster without making the audience feel like they’re being led by the hand through the whole story, which is a rare thing.
Inception is all about the mind and the dreams therein. Leo DiCaprio plays a man whose speciality is to infiltrate people’s minds and extract whatever vital information that’s there, in this case the head of an energy corporation, a man plagued by the death of his father and their torturous relationship that they had; Leo and his other partners’s are trying to plant an idea into his mind so that he will dissolve his company, in so making their rival the only true power in the energy business. This isn’t easy and involves going into his mind and trying to influence him while fighting off his own mental defenses, portrayed as goons with guns.
It’s intelligent and very, very interesting and for all it’s clever, thought-provoking ideas it still manages to have plenty of action and some brilliant set-pieces, including a scene where a train rolls down the middle of a road without any tracks and the money-maker, where a whole city folds itself in half. I was a little disappointed that Nolan went the shaky-cam route with this rather than his steady camerawork of the Batman films. I prefer to see what’s going on in a scene without the editing going past so fast that you can barely tell what’s going on; it’s a modern cinema thing and the sooner they kill it the better movies will be. Despite the shaky-cam these scenes are amazing and just goes to show that CGI has come to such a level that it no longer looks like CGI: it looks real, and when you can imagine whatever you want and have it appear on-screen straight from memory, that is incredible.
Every member of the cast is excellent in this film with DiCaprio professionally keeping it rock solid as the lead. He’s an actor who can really deliver a movie single-handed and even though he’s just a part of an ensemble cast he is the standout.
It is the best movie of the summer so go see it then try to remember your dreams that night.
