Inception (2010)

Inception (2010)

Inception is a 2010 science fiction heist thriller film written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan. The film stars a large ensemble cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ken Watanabe, Tom Hardy, Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, and Michael Caine. DiCaprio plays a professional thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets. He is offered a chance to have his criminal history erased as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "Inception", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.

Shortly after finishing Insomnia (2002), Nolan wrote an 80-page treatment about "dream stealers" envisioning a horror film inspired by lucid dreaming and presented the idea to Warner Bros. Feeling he needed to have more experience with large-scale film production, Nolan retired the project and instead worked on Batman Begins (2005), The Prestige (2006), and The Dark Knight (2008). He spent six months revising the script before Warner Bros. purchased it in February 2009.[7] Inception was filmed in six countries on four continents, beginning in Tokyo on June 19, 2009, and finishing in Canada on November 22, 2009. Its official budget was US$160 million; a cost which was split between Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures. Nolan's reputation and success with The Dark Knight helped secure the film's $100 million in advertising expenditure.

Inception‍ '​s première was held in London on July 8, 2010; its wide release to both conventional and IMAX theaters began on July 16, 2010. A box office success, Inception has grossed over $800 million worldwide becoming the 45th-highest-grossing film of all time. The home video market also had strong results, with $68 million in DVD and Blu-ray sales. Inception opened to acclaim from critics, who praised its story, score, and ensemble cast. It won four Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects, and was nominated for four more: Best Picture, Best Original Score, Best Art Direction, and Best Original Screenplay.

Storyline

Dom Cobb is a skilled thief, the absolute best in the dangerous art of extraction, stealing valuable secrets from deep within the subconscious during the dream state, when the mind is at its most vulnerable. Cobb's rare ability has made him a coveted player in this treacherous new world of corporate espionage, but it has also made him an international fugitive and cost him everything he has ever loved. Now Cobb is being offered a chance at redemption. One last job could give him his life back but only if he can accomplish the impossible-inception. Instead of the perfect heist, Cobb and his team of specialists have to pull off the reverse: their task is not to steal an idea but to plant one. If they succeed, it could be the perfect crime. But no amount of careful planning or expertise can prepare the team for the dangerous enemy that seems to predict their every move. An enemy that only Cobb could have seen coming.

Plot

Dominick "Dom" Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are "extractors", who perform corporate espionage using an experimental military technology to infiltrate the subconscious of their targets and extract information while experiencing shared dreaming. Their latest target is Japanese businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe). The extraction from Saito fails because of the memory of Cobb's wife Mal (Marion Cotillard). Saito reveals that he was actually auditioning the team to perform the difficult act of "inception": planting an idea in a person's subconscious.

To break up the energy conglomerate of ailing competitor Maurice Fischer (Pete Postlethwaite), Saito wants Cobb to cause Fischer's son and heir, Robert (Cillian Murphy) to dissolve his father's company. In return, Saito promises to use his influence to clear Cobb's murder charge, allowing Cobb to return home to his children. Cobb accepts the offer and sets about assembling his team: Eames (Tom Hardy), a conman and identity forger; Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a chemist who concocts a powerful sedative for a stable "dream within a dream" strategy; Ariadne (Ellen Page), an architecture student tasked with designing the labyrinth of the dream landscapes, recruited with the help of Cobb's father-in-law, Professor Stephen Miles (Michael Caine). Saito accompanies the team to verify their success. When Ariadne shares a dream with Cobb, she learns that his subconscious recreates Mal, and she appears frequently in his dreams as a hostile force.

When the elder Fischer dies in Sydney, Robert Fischer accompanies the body on a flight back to Los Angeles, which the team uses as an opportunity to approach him. Cobb sedates and brings Fischer into a shared dream with the extractors. At each level in the layered dreaming, the person generating the dream stays behind to set up a "kick" that will be used to awaken the other sleeping team members who have entered another dream layer deeper. The plan is for Yusuf to drive off a bridge in the first dream layer, Arthur to use the elevator in the second layer, and someone to create an explosion in the third layer simultaneously. While death in a dream would normally cause the dreamer to wake up, the sedatives used to stabilize the dreams would not allow that. Thus, death during the mission will result in entering "Limbo", an expanse of infinite raw subconscious from which it is very difficult to escape.

In the first dream layer, the team enter Yusuf's dream of a rainy Los Angeles. The team abducts Fischer, but he subconsciously creates a team of bodyguards who wound Saito. Eames impersonates Fischer's godfather, Peter Browning (Tom Berenger), to suggest Fischer reconsider his father's will. Yusuf drives the van, pursued by the bodyguards, as the rest (including Fischer) are sedated into the second level.

In the second layer, a hotel dreamed by Arthur, Cobb convinces Fischer that he is kidnapped by Browning and that Cobb is his subconscious protector. Cobb persuades him to go down another level to explore Browning's subconscious (whereas it is actually a ruse to enter Fischer's).

The third layer is a snowy mountain fortress dreamed by Eames. The team has to infiltrate it and hold off the guards as Cobb takes Fischer into the equivalent of his subconscious.

Yusuf, under pursuit in the first layer, accidentally drives off a bridge and initiates his kick too soon. This removes the gravity of Arthur's dream world and causes an avalanche in Eames' dream. Arthur is forced to improvise a new kick that synchronize with the van hitting the water. Cobb's projection of Mal kills Fischer, and Saito succumbs to his wounds; both fall into Limbo.[13] While Eames sets up a kick by rigging the fortress with explosives, Cobb and Ariadne enter Limbo to find Fischer and Saito.

Cobb reveals to Ariadne that he and Mal went to Limbo while experimenting with the dream-sharing technology. There, they spent fifty years constructing a world from their shared memories. When Mal refused to leave Limbo, Cobb implanted in her mind the idea that the world wasn't real, using a rudimentary form of Inception. As she woke up from the dream, Mal was still convinced that it wasn't the real world. In an attempt to "wake up" for real, Mal committed suicide, and framed Cobb for her death to force him to do the same. Facing a murder charge, Cobb fled the U.S., leaving his children in the care of Professor Miles.

Through his confession, Cobb attains catharsis, makes peace with his subconscious's creation of Mal and remains in Limbo to search for Saito. Ariadne finds Fischer and wakes him up with a kick. Fischer is revived at the mountain fortress, where he enters a safe room to discover and accept the planted idea: a vision of his father telling him to be his own man. All team members other than Cobb and Saito ride the synchronized kicks back to reality: Ariadne jumps off a balcony in Limbo, Eames detonates the explosives in the fortress, Arthur blasts an elevator containing the team's sleeping bodies up an elevator shaft, and the van in Yusuf's dream hits the water. Cobb eventually finds an aged Saito in Limbo, reminding him of the agreement. The two wake up on the airplane, where the entire team and Robert Fischer have awakened.

Upon arrival at Los Angeles Airport, Cobb passes the U.S. immigration checkpoint and his waiting father-in-law accompanies him to his children. Cobb spins his small top, a totem for verifying one's dream state, but leaves it spinning on the table to join his family in the garden.

Cast

• Leonardo DiCaprio as Dom Cobb
• Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Arthur
• Ellen Page as Ariadne
• Tom Hardy as Eames,
• Ken Watanabe as Mr. Saito
• Dileep Rao as Yusuf.
• Cillian Murphy as Robert Michael Fischer,
• Tom Berenger as Peter Browning
• Marion Cotillard
• Pete Postlethwaite
• Michael Caine as Professor Stephen Miles
• Lukas Haas as Nash
• Talulah Riley as a woman whom Eames disguises himself as in a dream

User Reviews

What is the most resilient parasite? An Idea! Yes, Nolan has created something with his unbelievably, incredibly and god- gifted mind which will blow the minds of the audience away. The world premiere of the movie, directed by Hollywood's most inventive dreamers, was shown in London and has already got top notch reviews worldwide and has scored maximum points! Now the question arises what the movie has that it deserve all this?

Dom Cobb(Di Caprio) is an extractor who is paid to invade the dreams of various business tycoons and steal their top secret ideas. Cobb robs forcefully the psyche with practiced skill, though he's increasingly haunted by the memory of his late wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), who has a nasty habit of showing up in his subconscious and wreaking havoc on his missions. Cobb had been involved so much in his heist work that he had lost his love!

But then, as fate had decided, a wealthy business man Saito( Ken Watanabe) hands over the responsibility of dissolving the empire of his business rival Robert Fischer Jr.(Cillian Murphy). But this time his job was not to steal the idea but to plant a new one: 'Inception'

Then what happens is the classic heist movie tradition. To carry out the the task, Cobb's 'brainiac' specialists team up again with him, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), his longtime organizer; Tom Hardy (Eames), a "forger" who can shapeshift at will; and Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a powerful sedative supplier.

There is only one word to describe the cinematography, the set designs and the special effects, and that is Exceptional! You don't just watch the scenes happening, you feel them. The movie is a real thrill ride. The action scenes are well picturised and the music by Hans Zimmer is electronically haunting. Never, in the runtime of the movie, you will get a chance to move your eyes from the screen to any other object.

Leonardo, who is still popularly known for Jack Dawson played by him in Titanic, should be relieved as his role as Dom Cobb will be remembered forever. His performance may or may not fetch him an Oscar but it will be his finest performance till date. The supporting cast too did an extraordinary work. Christopher Nolan, ah! what a man he is. His work is nothing less than a masterpiece and he deserves all the awards in the 'Best Director' category. If "Inception" is a metaphysical puzzle, it's also a metaphorical one: It's hard not to draw connections between Cobb's dream-weaving and Nolan's film making, intended to seduce us, mess with our heads and leave an ever-lasting impression.

To conclude, I would just say before your life ends, do yourself a favor by experiencing this exceptionally lucid classic created by Nolan!

My Rating: 10/10