I’m in a backlash frame of mind, keen after focusing on the high and mighty to indulge in my great genre loves, crime and sci-fi. Luckily the science fiction scene keeps throwing up wonderments to latch onto. None speaks louder than Christopher Nolan’s over-the-top futuristic thriller Inception. What a brilliant concept, straight from the pen of Philip K. Dick! Dom Cobb (intensely rendered by Leonardo DiCaprio, an actor I’m belatedly coming to admire) is a dream thief, an expert at invading the dreams of his targets in order to extract secrets useful in the waking world. But his past holds a consuming tragedy and when a tycoon challenges him to go one step further with dream manipulation, Dom assembles a multi-talented team (rather like a Mission Impossible band, with some excellent supporting acting performances) to construct a dream within a dream within a dream within . . . you get the drift – a plot conceit that could have flopped irretrievably within minutes. Yet Inception pulls it off, blasting the viewer from a stunning opening scene right through its two and a half hours of length. A massively heavy-handed music score, relentless shoot-em-up scenes, brain-twisting plot complexity . . . all these could have derailed the film but instead add to its surreal, clunky grandeur. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face, so absorbed was I in the sumptuous otherworld I was thrust into.
Like Avatar, Inception is grand sci-fi moviemaking at its best: unbridled Wagnerian pomp that somehow works magically. 4 stars.