Review: Inception

Remember Memento, writer-director Christopher Nolans mind-bending breakthrough thriller from 2000? Well, think of Inception as Memento blown up to blockbuster proportions.

Inceptiongets stuck in the same ponderous groove as The Dark Knight and like that film, its too long.

Once again we have an ingenious psychological premise and a devious, Byzantine plot. And, once again, were left with a film that doesnt quite measure up to its conceit.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell posited the chilling notion of a Thought Police, but in Nolans clever sci-fi vision, we have thought thieves. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Dom Cobb, a master in this form of subconscious larceny, known as extraction. He and his associates can enter a subjects mind during sleep and purloin his or her most hidden secrets, using a technology that allows for shared lucid dreaming. (Talk about your collective unconscious.)

Cobb circles the globe, committing his thought crimes for a clientele of ruthless corporate bigwigs. Then, one of the sharks, the Japanese tycoon Saito (Ken Watanabe), offers him a new challenge. Instead of extracting information, he wants Cobb to plant an idea in a rivals brain. The target is Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the callow son and heir to a dying energy magnate (Pete Postlethwaite). Saito wants Cobb to convince the boy to disperse his fathers empire.

The inception is a complex undertaking that requires inducing a dream within a dream within a dream. To do it, Cobb assembles a crack team that includes his young right-hand man Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt); Eames (Tom Hardy), a snide Brit who specializes in impersonating other people in dreams; and the chemist Yusuf (Dileep Rao), who furnishes the necessary sedatives to induce some serious REM. To build the labyrinth of dreams in Fischers mind, Cobb recruits the aptly named Ariadne (Ellen Page), a gifted architecture student recommended by her professor (Michael Caine), Cobbs father-in-law and mentor.

Cobbs training workshops with Ariadne turn out to be the most surreal section of the film. Ariadne is a quick study, and before long, she is playfully turning her dream landscape the boulevards of Paris into a funhouse of mirrored surfaces and impossible perspectives. For several glorious minutes, Inception becomes the motion picture equivalent of an M.C. Escher lithograph.

As the two enter each others dreams, Ariadne discovers Cobbs own hidden secret, involving his mysterious wife (a suitably dreamy Marion Cotillard) and the reason behind his exile from the U.S. Cobb is hoping to use the inception to end his exile and be reunited with their children, but his mental instability threatens the operation. Its up to Ariadne to keep him on track when the team finally makes the tricky descent into Fischers mental maelstrom.

The early part of the film is engrossing and, despite what the cryptic trailers suggest, the story isnt difficult to follow if youre half-awake. Nolan provides his own detailed dream logic. For example, five minutes of waking life equal an hour in a dream (and thats multiplied for dreams within dreams). Hes also tailored his dream worlds to the action-thriller genre: Cobbs team has to battle a kind of subconscious security force in Fischers mind. And there are so many explosions and implosions that at times it feels like were inside the head of a demolitions expert. But Nolan does manage to have a bit of fun from time to time, such as when a team members inner urge to urinate unleashes a rainstorm on the dreamscape. He also throws in plenty of references for movie geeks. Youll spot allusions to The Matrix, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Fantastic Voyage and even, if Im not mistaken, Jean Cocteaus The Blood of a Poet.

Finally, though, Inception starts reminding us again of Nolans shortcomings as a filmmaker. In the years since Mementos release, the British director has gone mainstream and most famously helmed the Batman reboots, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. He now commands nine-figure budgets and can do awesome things with state-of-the-art special effects and international locations Inception takes us from the narrow alleys of Tangiers to Albertas snow-shrouded Fortress Mountain. But there doesnt seem to have been a comparable increase in his artistic range.

Inception gets stuck in the same ponderous groove as The Dark Knight and like that film, its too long. The way Nolan juggles the different dream time frames, dexterously edited by Lee Smith, is at first audacious, but then grows tiresome. Finally, his imagination fails him. Planting a movie, even a genre one, in the field of dreams offers rich possibilities that he fails to cultivate. At one point, Eames tells Arthur, "You mustnt be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling," and you wonder why Nolan didnt follow that advice himself.

He also doesnt make full use of his excellent cast. DiCaprio, once again playing a man tormented by his past (see Shutter Island), gives a commanding performance. His co-stars, however, get little chance to develop their roles. Theres some mild antagonism between Eames and Arthur, but it leads nowhere. Pages dream-weaving Ariadne becomes Cobbs confidante, but we learn nothing about her and theres no emotional connection between them. Only Murphys Fischer, and Tom Berenger as his avuncular adviser, are fleshed-out characters, and then its because the plot necessitates it.

Before I stop carping, I also have to say that, despite Guy Dyass elaborate production design and Paul J. Franklins dazzling visual effects, Inception never really evokes the sensation of dreaming. Other films with more modest budgets have been able to do it Richard Linklaters Waking Life springs to mind, not to mention most of the works of Luis Bunuel. Nolans ambitious dream architecture lacks a true sense of the absurd.

But I may be demanding too much from what is, after all, just a summer blockbuster. Next to dim-bulb movies like The A-Team and Knight and Day, Inception looks like a work of incandescent genius.

Inception opens Friday, July 16.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBC News.