U.S.A. - U.K. | 2010 Directed by Christopher Nolan Starring Leonardo DiCaprio Joseph Godorn-Levitt Ellen Page Color | 148 Minutes | PG-13 Blu-ray / DVD Combo (RA-HD / R1-NTSC | 3-disc set) Warner Home Video Hold your mouse pointer over an image for a pop-up caption 2-Disc Blu-ray edition

		EC Home Review List Coming Soon Downloads
		Review by Brandon Tenold Film:9 BD/DVD:10

NOTE: Screenshots were taken from the DVD

Coming hot on the heels of his well-received entries in the Batman series, 2005's Batman Begins and its wildly successful sequel, 2008's The Dark Knight, which resuscitated a franchise many people thought dead, director Christopher Nolan's sci-fi epic Inception continues to establish him as a filmmaker of real clout. It's a big, effects-laden film that has an ambitious story to go along with its impressive visuals and action scenes, and it thankfully respects its audience's intelligence while still delivering the spectacle and thrills expected of a big summer movie.

Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a thief who specializes in a very specific type of corporate espionage: Rather than stealing secrets and information from someone physically, Cobb instead enters a person's dreams, extracting the information from the victim's subconscious. If all goes well, the subject isn't even aware that someone else has entered their mind or that the information has been taken.

In Japan, Cobb and his partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are in the middle of trying to steal some information from a powerful businessman called Saito (Ken Watanabe) for some unscrupulous corporation. However, Saito catches their deception and Cobb and Arthur have to abandon the mission before they get the info. Having failed their employers, Cobb and Arthur are now on the run from both Saito and the company that hired them. Saito catches up with them first, but rather than turning them in to the police, he instead gives them an offer of his own. Rather than take information from someone's mind, Saito instead wants Cobb to implant an idea there, in a process known as inception. Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), an heir to a rival energy company, will soon inherit control of the business from his dying father. With Saito no longer able to compete, Fischer's company will have a monopoly and control nearly all of the world's energy supply, essentially making it a new superpower. Saito wants Cobb to give Fischer the idea to break up his father's empire, and Fischer can't know that the idea has been implanted; it must seem like it came to him naturally. If he succeeds, Saito will use his influence to make it so that Cobb can legally reenter the United States and see his children again.

In order to complete this task, Cobb and Arthur assemble a team consisting of Ariadne (Ellen Page), an "architect" whose job is to build the dream-worlds the team will inhabit; Eames (Tom Hardy), a "forger" who will impersonate people close to Fischer after they've entered his dreams; and Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a "chemist" who can make a sedative strong enough to keep them under but still allow them to wake up under certain conditions. Saito also insists on coming along to make sure they get the job done. Their mission won't be easy, as inception requires the group to not only enter someone's dreams, but also dreams within dreams, with each layer having its own internal logic and dangers. Further complicating things, Cobb's dead wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) — or rather Cobb's memory of Mal — haunts Cobb's mind, trying to sabotage his efforts.

As you can probably tell from the above synopsis, Inception is a densely plotted movie, with various twists and turns and dream worlds that have several different laws and exceptions to those laws. Although some have complained that the film's plot is needlessly convoluted and hard to follow, I personally didn't have any trouble figuring out what was happening at any point, as Nolan takes the time to make sure every detail of the film's world is carefully laid out for the audience. In fact if I have one complaint with Inception, it's that parts of the film, particularly in its first half, are a little too exposition-heavy, with various characters carefully explaining the different 'rules' that make up the dream levels the characters go into. Once it truly gets going, however, Inception is a fantastic ride, with Nolan effectively juggling several unique action set-pieces simultaneously. The sequence in which Gordon-Levitt's character has to fend off various thugs in a hotel where the center of gravity keeps shifting around is a definite highlight in this regard. All of these sequences are paced and edited to together masterfully, with actions on one dream level affecting those below it, and the tension and excitement continuously being ratcheted up until the climax. Despite its 2½ hour running time, the pace of the film almost never lags, with Nolan managing to sustain my interest up until the very end.

Ultimately, the fact that the film tries to apply so much logic to its dream worlds does have the effect of making them never truly seem like dreams (dreams are after all, illogical and nonsensical by their very nature), but this is also important in making the audience feel that there is something at stake. After all, how are people supposed to care about what happens to the characters if they never get the sense they're in any real danger? That said, Nolan still has fun with the possibilities inherent in having most of his film take place in a dream world, such as the aforementioned hotel sequence or the scene were Ariadne discovers she can twist and distort the architecture of the entire world around her into various impossible shapes at will.

On a visual level, Inception is a truly stunning film. One of Nolan's greatest strengths is that he is one of the few directors who knows the limitations of CGI. In other words, he knows when to use CGI and when physical/practical effects would be better, such as building a huge revolving set for the hotel sequence to give the illusion of shifting gravity rather than crafting the whole thing in a computer. As a result, no matter how fanciful the visuals get they all have a sense of real mass and grit to them as opposed to the plastic, cartoonish look that some films that overuse CGI have; Inception's visual effects team took home a much deserved Oscar for their efforts.

Despite its strengths, there are those that won't like Inception. They'll say that it's too talky, that it takes itself too seriously, and that it's story is too convoluted for its own good, and these criticisms aren't entirely without merit. Yet on nearly every level — from its visuals to its action set-pieces to its performances — Inception is a damn impressive movie. In an age where the summer blockbuster season is increasingly dominated by lowest-common-denominator CGI shit-fests like Michael Bay's Transformers movies, it's refreshing to see a director like Nolan come along with the guts and ambition to make a big sci-fi movie that doesn't require its audience to leave their brains at the door when watching it, all while still delivering the blockbuster goods.

With Inception, Nolan has enhanced his growing reputation as one of the best blockbuster-level directors working today.

This edition of Inception comes with two Blu-ray discs, one containing a 1080p transfer of the film and the other consisting of special features, as well as a third DVD disc containing a standard-def version of the film.* As stated in my review, Inception is a very good looking film, and the Blu-ray doesn't disappoint in this department. Colors are vivid and realistic, blacks are deep and the detail is clear, with virtually no flaws to be found. The DTS-HD 5.1 track is similarly impressive, with everything from gunshots and explosions to Hans Zimmer's booming musical score coming through loud and clear. All the while, the actors' voices are well balanced and never get overpowered by the rest of the mix, no matter how chaotic it gets.

The primary extra on the first disc is a feature called Extraction Mode, where about 45-minutes of various behind-the-scenes featurettes are played at appropriate points during the film. These featurettes can also be watched separate from the film. The second disc includes the ability to listen to Hans Zimmer's musical score in its entirety (this is strictly audio, with the screen remaining blank while the score is playing), a documentary hosted by Gordon-Levitt on the nature of dreams and a "motion-comic" prequel short to the film, in addition to more standard extras like concept art and trailers.

With excellent audio and video and an extra disc of high-quality special features, this Blu-ray release is a must-own for fans of the film. 8/08/11

*EDITOR'S NOTE The 3-disc Blu-ray/DVD "combo pack" edition reviewed here appears to have already gone out of print and is currently not being offered by Amazon Third Party sellers.

HOME | REVIEWS | TOP