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#160 - Inception
Christopher Nolan, 2010
A professional criminal who specialises in entering people's dream states must assemble a crew in order to carry out an act of corporate espionage.
This is my first time watching this since it came out in theatres and the Christopher Nolan hype has worn off rather severely in the years since. As a result, I was skeptical as to whether or not I'd still like Inception as much as I had the first time around. Fortunately, the film still holds up and is definitely better than the bulk of Nolan's output. A lot of that has to do with the clever (if not all that original) premise involving inception itself. It boils down to a heist movie with plenty of those narrative beats intact - protagonist taking one last job, assembling a sufficiently mismatched crew to carry out the job, job goes disastrously wrong, etc. - but the world-building involved in setting up the concept is sufficiently elaborate and revealed quickly and deftly. There are flaws in the system, of course, often as a result of the various players' fragmented mind-states (but then again, some are plot holes - you win some, you lose some). The visuals are also good - sure, the dreamscape doesn't get totally weird aside from some shifts in gravity or collapsing architecture, but what there is looks spectacular even on a TV screen. Action sequences vary in quality. sometimes they are interesting (such as the fight scenes involving shifting gravity). Sometimes they're just regular car chases and gunfights - not bad ones, but surprisingly lacking in style considering the potential on offer. I guess some originality is better than none.
The biggest problem I have with Inception is that it feels like it's more concerned with developing its impressively detailed sci-fi scenario than it is with developing its characters. The film features some talented actors but talent only goes so far when the bulk of the characters have only the slightest amount of depth. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy trade banter as a pair of snarky specialists, Ellen Page shows some range despite spending much of her screentime serving as a recipient of exposition, Ken Watanabe as the team's intimidating employer, Cillian Murphy makes for a constantly bewildered mark, and so on and so forth. Naturally, the character with the most depth is Leonardo diCaprio's protagonist, whose professionalism is scuppered by his own personal demons manifesting in the form of his wife (Marion Cotillard, who gets a bit more to work with as a constantly-shifting dream character). Still, there's ultimately enough there that it doesn't get thrown out of balance with the plot's external action. These days I'm not as sold on Nolan as I used to be, but I'm glad that Inception is still an impressive piece of work. It's not quite as clever or inventive as it wants to be, but as far as recent blockbusters go it's definitely one of the best.
Christopher Nolan, 2010
A professional criminal who specialises in entering people's dream states must assemble a crew in order to carry out an act of corporate espionage.
This is my first time watching this since it came out in theatres and the Christopher Nolan hype has worn off rather severely in the years since. As a result, I was skeptical as to whether or not I'd still like Inception as much as I had the first time around. Fortunately, the film still holds up and is definitely better than the bulk of Nolan's output. A lot of that has to do with the clever (if not all that original) premise involving inception itself. It boils down to a heist movie with plenty of those narrative beats intact - protagonist taking one last job, assembling a sufficiently mismatched crew to carry out the job, job goes disastrously wrong, etc. - but the world-building involved in setting up the concept is sufficiently elaborate and revealed quickly and deftly. There are flaws in the system, of course, often as a result of the various players' fragmented mind-states (but then again, some are plot holes - you win some, you lose some). The visuals are also good - sure, the dreamscape doesn't get totally weird aside from some shifts in gravity or collapsing architecture, but what there is looks spectacular even on a TV screen. Action sequences vary in quality. sometimes they are interesting (such as the fight scenes involving shifting gravity). Sometimes they're just regular car chases and gunfights - not bad ones, but surprisingly lacking in style considering the potential on offer. I guess some originality is better than none.
The biggest problem I have with Inception is that it feels like it's more concerned with developing its impressively detailed sci-fi scenario than it is with developing its characters. The film features some talented actors but talent only goes so far when the bulk of the characters have only the slightest amount of depth. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy trade banter as a pair of snarky specialists, Ellen Page shows some range despite spending much of her screentime serving as a recipient of exposition, Ken Watanabe as the team's intimidating employer, Cillian Murphy makes for a constantly bewildered mark, and so on and so forth. Naturally, the character with the most depth is Leonardo diCaprio's protagonist, whose professionalism is scuppered by his own personal demons manifesting in the form of his wife (Marion Cotillard, who gets a bit more to work with as a constantly-shifting dream character). Still, there's ultimately enough there that it doesn't get thrown out of balance with the plot's external action. These days I'm not as sold on Nolan as I used to be, but I'm glad that Inception is still an impressive piece of work. It's not quite as clever or inventive as it wants to be, but as far as recent blockbusters go it's definitely one of the best.