On the way back from my recent holiday in Canada, schedules didn't work and I ended up with 2 days in Los Angeles. I watched Inception in Santa Monica at a crappy little theater called the Santa Monica 7. Pretty much any Wellington theater is better. The seats had almost no incline and we were hoping (against hope apparently) that no tall people would end up sitting in front of us.
Enough about the theater itself, on to the movie.
There is lots that is great about the movie. The concept, people stealing ideas in shared dreams, is immediately interesting to a science fiction fan. I liked the action scenes, the special effects (especially the weightless scene - very cool), and almost all the characters. My favorite scene has to be the kick, kick, kick sequence which I will say no more about.
Leonardo DiCaprio is consistently good. I know he gets labeled as a bad actor, since he is a teen heart throb and ends up in Hollywood blockbusters regularly, but he has starred in a string of good movies that are all worth watching (Shutter Island, Revolutionary Road, Body of Lies, Blood Diamond, The Departed and The Aviator to go back only 6 years). His body of work is solid and I will watch anything he stars in.
Ellen Page , on the other hand, has a reputation of being a great up-and-comer. I love that she's from Halifax, where I lived more than 10 years, but I don't get the big fuss over her. She's good, but I find that she is a little off in most of her movies (there are LOTS) and I can't quite put my finger on it. Still - she's today's superstar and ended up in this movie.
All the other main actors do their job well. The directing is good - it tells the story clearly and simply (despite the many twists and turns and the levels of dreams).
The problem for me was the writing. I've written a lot of first drafts. I know what a first draft feels like and there is lots in this movie that feels like a first draft. It seems that Leonardo DiCaprio's character Cobb is the only person who knows everything about dreams and when something surprising happens, Leo throws out another gotcha that no one else knew about. These are just rough edges that could have been smoother, and it feels like the dream "physics" was just made up on the spot and never revised or made consistent. It's a slap in the face since it happens so often in the middle of the action and is no where near as clean as everything else in the movie.
It could have been The Matrix all over again. It tries to be, but fails. Too bad - I would have loved another Matrix.
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Yeah I'd agree. The dream logic was a bit inconsistent for one thing. And another is that I was astounded those people could not only fall asleep so immediately, and start dreaming right away, but that they could be so damned lucid throughout.
In fact Di Capio's wife wandering in and out of his dreams was the only authentic thing about them.
Still, we did enjoy it. But Matrix was done much better (more than I can say for the it's sequels).
I didn't actually mind the fact that they could fall asleep so quickly and be lucid immediately, after all, that is their profession and they are awesome at it.
However, you can kill yourself to get out of a dream, except if you are sedated, and then you go into "limbo", but then, you can kill yourself in limbo to get out? WTF? I don't get it. Aren't you still sedated? But then, are you only sedated on certain levels of your dream? Who knows?
Anyway - it deserves its rating. Worth a trip to the theater, but I wasn't BLOWN AWAY. Too bad - it had the potential.
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