INCEPTION REVIEW

*MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS*

Inception is, by far, director Christopher Nolan's best film and one of Leonardo DiCaprio's best roles.

DiCaprio plays Dominic Cobb who is a skilled thief and is an expert at stealing secrets from deep within the subconscious. He manages to achieve this whilst in the sleep state.

Most people would say that the narrative is too complicated to understand and I would agree. However, after a few watches, I managed to completely understand the purpose of the film which is to excite and create tension for the viewers and keep them engaged for over two hours. This film does need your 100% attention. If you leave the film, even for a minute, you'll have missed about 10% of the film. This film isn't for the faint-hearted. I would recommend this film to those who are fans of action and sci-fi and Nolan's previous films, such as Memento. 

The film has a strong opening. We see Dom in the middle of a heist and trying to steal a secret from within Saito's (Ken Watanabe) mind. However, Saito figures out Dom's plan and Dom fails. Both conscious, Saito offers Dom the chance to go home and see his children as he hasn't been back due to the fact his wife killed herself and framed him, making it look like he killed her. What Saito asks Dom to do isn't to steal an idea from a persons subconscious but to plant an idea instead. Dom agrees and now must face his most difficult challenge yet. He assembles a team of specialists that include: Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the architect who manages and researches Dom's missions; Eames (Tom Hardy) who specialises in forgery and can create different characters inside a persons mind; Ariadne (Ellen Page), a young graduate student who designs the dreams and Yusuf (Dileep Rao) who provides the sedatives for the mission.

The majority of the film is spent planning out the mission but this isn't boring. This allows the viewer to understand how difficult their mission is and how it is achieved. This is also one of the most important scenes in the film as we learn how everything works and we get to know the characters more.

At the beginning of the film, when Dom fails his mission, we see his frustration at not succeeding which is one of the reasons why we want him to achieve this mission. We also want him to succeed for the sake of the children, who have been living without either of their parents and with their grandfather (Michael Caine).

As I mentioned earlier, this is an action film, however, the action sequences don't take place until the final hour of the film when Dom and his team are carrying out their plan.

This doesn't matter, though, as the action sequences are some of the best I've ever seen. Guns get shot and people get injured which puts Dom's mission at risk of failing. However, he doesn't give up and becomes even more determined to succeed.

This film also contains one of the best stunt sequences in the film and it's not achieved by Dom but by his partner, Arthur, during an anti-gravity scene. Gordon-Levitt, who plays Arthur, did all of his own stunts in this film which is really impressive and the reason why it's one of my favourite sequences in the film.

The film achieved a total of four Oscars, one of them for cinematography and one for its visual effects. I'm not surprised about this as the cinematography and visual effects are some of the best I've ever seen in cinema.

One of my only regrets about this film is that when I first saw it at the cinema, I was only thirteen at the time and wasn't interested in the film and didn't enjoy it until I watched it during my Film Studies class when I was 16.

Overall, with amazing directing and writing from Christopher Nolan, interesting characters, brilliant action sequences and stunning special effects, this is, by far, one of my favourite films.

9/10