But first, a plot-crunch: Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio, who I used to hate but now genuinely admire) can enter people's dreams to steal information - this process is known as 'extraction'. 'Incepetion' is when an idea is planted in someone's mind, and that's what Cobb is asked to do, even though it's supposedly impossible. He then sets about putting together a little gang of specialists who can enter dreams with him, in order to enter the dream/mind of Fischer (Cillian Murphy, who always looks a bit ill), a young man who's poised to take over a massive corporation.
There is A LOT more to the story than this, but that's the basic premise. And interestingly, it's not really about what Cobb can do, but about why he does it, but that's all I'm saying about THAT.
Honestly, if you've seen the trailer you've seen most of the 'money shots' - a street folding over itself, a train barrelling down a road, a crumbling city - but the film's not about conjuring up surreal landscapes (though there is a little bit of this in it) because the point of extraction/inception is that the dreamer shouldn't be made aware that they're dreaming as this can jeopardise the mission. It's about falling down a rabbit hole into another rabbit hole into another rabbit hole, and forgetting which way is up.
INCEPTION is perhaps the tensest film I have seen in a long while, in that I was constantly leaning forward, eager to see what happened next, and this in itself is a masterful stroke on behalf of director Christopher Nolan, especially when he starts juggling dream layers. What's real? Is reality overrated? Whose dream are you in - yours or someone else's? And is Nolan a crafty bastard? I guarantee that by the end of the film you'll be thinking "Yes".
Recommended for fans of: sci-fi that manages to be as action-packed as it is mind-bending.
Overall value: Incredible pounds and Crazy pence
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