The Inception Bum

This has been one of the worst summer movie seasons ever, but now there is finally a movie that can help salvage it.

Inception will blow your mind; it is like Dreamscape on steroids. If you have been a fan of Christopher Nolan’s scripts in the past you will know that this ride, just like his others, will not be a smooth one, but it will be one you enjoy at every turn. It is also Leonardo Dicaprio’s best movie since The Departed.
Inception is about a dream thief, Dom Cobb (Leo) that needs to do one last job to get his life back. After it goes wrong Dom and his partner, Arthur, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (great as always), are put into a position to accept the original target’s (Ken Wantanabe’s Saito) proposal to implant an idea into a soon to die mogul’s son’s mind to get him to split up the company and prevent a monopoly. For a thief to do something like this is like breaking into a bank to put the money back. Arthur doesn’t think it can be done, but Dom knows it can. He needs to put together a team to get the job done, and goes to see his father (Michael Caine), a college professor, to find an architect to help build the world needed to work in. Dom’s father introduces him to Ariadne (Ellen Page), and she takes to this new world of endless possibilities immediately. The rest of the cast is rounded out by Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Tom Hardy and Marion Cotillard. Each one of them is excellent.

I would love to tell you more, but I also don’t want to give out too much of the plot. Simply following the storyline is a mind bending roller coaster ride. A movie like this could have been extremely complicated, but Nolan does a great job of putting the scenes together in way that seems like it should be confusing, but you will able to be follow it at every quick turn. You’ve probably seen the trailers, so you know it looks cool, but it’s the script that really makes it a success.

Christopher Nolan’s past scripts have been nothing short of intriguing as well. It all started with Memento, when we got to follow around an amnesiac’s quest to find his wife’s killer, then he gave us Insomnia, about a serial killer in Alaska, followed by both of the recent Batman movies (Batman Begins and The Dark Knight).

In a season filled with sub-par schlock Nolan and Dicaprio has finally given us a smart, absorbing two hours and twenty minutes of eye candy. Many are already considering it to be the first movie of the year that might get a best picture nomination, and I am glad to say that I am one of the many.