Short Review: It's like The Matrix without all the black leather, pliable physics and all of that "There is no spoon" blathering.


Christopher Nolan (The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Memento) has established himself as the best director of his generation with this film. Then again, his generation includes directors like Brett Ratner, Ben Stiller and Ben Affleck, so he probably shouldn't start gripping his lapels too tightly.

This is a great movie. It is a masterful work. This is one of the most fully realized and complicated movies ever made. When I drag out the word "complicated", I mean Nolan tackles a plot with so many moving, interwoven layers that it is a technical marvel his movie is even comprehensible. The fact that one can walk away from the film with a clear understanding of what happened is worthy of an Oscar at the least.

Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Cobb, a guilt-ridden "extractor". He is a man who has the means, through technology, to enter a person's mind and rob secrets from their subconscious while the subject is in a dream state. Cobb and his partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are hired by the infinitely wealthy businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe) to reverse their methods. Saito wants the men to not steal a thought from a target, but implant an idea in a man's head. The target? Robert Fischer, Jr. (Cillian Murphy) the troubled heir of a newly dead energy tycoon. The idea? Fischer must have the idea to dismantle his father's massive business empire.

Cobb assembles a crew and gets to work. They knock Fischer out, enter his mind and proceed to drill down into his subconscious. The plot gets complicated when the crew begins to work, not only in Fischer's dreams, but in his dreams inside of his dreams, inside of his dream (and then a little deeper still). You read that correctly.

Nolan has his characters literally working through five different realms of consciousness at the same time and never loses control of his movie. It is logical, visually identifiable and amazingly coherent. This is an amazing feat of storytelling.

If working on all of these levels wasn't a big enough feat, there is the added layer of Cobb's subconscious mind intruding into the the dreams. As with all of Nolan's films, the major element of this story is remorse. Nolan seems obsessed with remorse and guilt. All of his heroes suffer from their pasts, tormented by what they did or did not do. Will Dormer in Insomnia is in anguish over his accidentally shooting his partner, Leonard in Memento is likewise troubled and Bruce Wayne (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight) is defined by his shame. Like these men, Cobb is stunted by the tragic suicide of his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard).

Cobb must overcome his guilt, define it, and ultimately reject it, if he is to move forward in his life. In tandem with Cobb, Fischer must likewise resolve his deeply painful issues with his deceased father. The pair of cathartic character arcs work seamlessly together and are thematically interwoven. Each compliments and enhances the other, bringing about an emotionally satisfying and intellectually fulfilling ending to the film. I've been writing reviews for years and trust me when I say, I don't get to use a sentence like that often.

If there is a downside to the film it is that the movie will be hindered by its connection to The Matrix. While this movie is certainly not a derivative of The Matrix, it will remind many of the sci-fi classic. The characters exist within a dream state. This means much of the movie's universe is pliable and weird things can and do happen. Reality is unsettled and it gets hard to know what is real and what is imaginary.

The Matrix is an important film for many technical and cinematic reasons. I do not mean to reduce its place. The fact is that The Matrix stoops to silly fight sequences, slow motion bullet trickery and is loaded down with meaningless philosophical mumbo jumbo. Inception is clearly the smarter film and avoids these thrill-ride gimmicks.


Nolan's film contains some striking special effects, but none of them are out of context nor overdone. He includes the visuals only when it enhances the story. The same goes with his fight sequences. There is a zero-gravity fight at one point. Instead of turning it into a display of "hey, ain't this cool" film making, Nolan has the fight, but keeps his eye on his narrative ball - moving his story forward.

This is a great film. It is as good as you have heard, if not better. It is a complex, moving film and stands as one of the better movies made in the past decade. It is possibly the best film since the turn of the century.*

It is worth seeing on the big screen. It is worth leaving your home, paying too much of your money for a ticket and sitting in a large crowd. That is saying something.


* - It takes more than one viewing to mark something as being the best of anything. Let's see if it holds up over time.




Related Reviews:
Christopher Nolan movies
The Dark Knight (2008)
The Prestige (2006)


Other Critic's Reviews:
Movie Freak
Cinema Blend



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Labels: Christopher Nolan, Cillian Murphy, Dileep Rao, Ellen Page, film, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine, movie review, Tom Berenger, Tom Hardy

Important when it was released, it was considered to be the first "serious" market friendly film made about the Vietnam War (The Deer Hunter was a bit too serious for most audiences). This led a renaissance of war films in the late 1980's. With Vietnam being turned into some sick cartoon by Missing in Action and Rambo: First Blood Part II, this movie corrected the record to a certain degree by taking the experience with some gravity. Ironically, writer/director Oliver Stonehad written the original screenplay, following his own tour in the war, to counter the light treatment he saw the film get in John Wayne's The Green Berets. Stone still shoehorns every possible experience, stereotype and myth into his masterwork and is manipulative in his own way. Stone's overreaching style is evidenced here but unlike his later films JFK, Nixon, Natural Born Killers and The Doors, his personal stamp doesn't get in the way of narrative.

Stone knows how to handle drama. The war is seen through the eyes of young Private Taylor (Charlie Sheen), who volunteered for service. Taylor finds himself having to choose sides in a platoon splintered in two. One half follows the cruel but effective Sergeant Barnes (Tom Berenger), the other half follows the more laid back, but just as effective Sergeant Gordin (Willem Dafoe). The performances of Berenger and Dafoe are worth the price of admission alone. Stone carefully crafts the conflict between the two halves of the platoon to show the two aspects of the war from his perspective and stands a brilliant piece of screenwriting.

One of the best war films ever released, this is one of the films everyone should see at least once.

Obviously, this being a war film, violence, rape and cursing abound. If you're a sensitive audience member, you probably want to shy away.


Related Reviews:
Vietnam War movies
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Rescue Dawn (2006)


Other Critic's Reviews:
Film Freak Central
Celluloid Heroes

Labels: Charlie Sheen, film, Forest Whitaker, movie review, Oliver Stone, Tom Berenger, Vietnam, war, Willem Dafoe