Inception
Director: Christopher Nolan
With: Leonardo DeCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard, Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy, etc.
Having missed the press screening, I saw this commercially and after the critical anointing as the film of the year. Hmmm... I’m not so sure.
I missed M*A*S*H the first time around, and all my friends told me it was the best movie ever. When it was re-released a few years later, I was right there on the first day. It was, you know, okay. A funny stoner war comedy with a couple of good bits and performances, but it didn’t knock Casablanca out of first place, or even what was number 20.
Nolan is a brainy and creative director, and he revitalized the moribund Batman franchise. I still like Memento best of all his films. The story, by Nolan, is interesting in a science-fiction way, and he has loaded it with emotional elements that add depth to the whizz-bang special effects. And, those effects are truly spectacular, if not wholly innovative.
But, there are long stretches of exposition, and the pace lags about 2/3 of the way through, the plot gets murky and involuted, and there is a standard happy ending. Good acting work by all, especially Cotillard and Gordon-Levitt, but the totality is a good, not great, movie. At more than 2 hours, the movie begs to be cut, especially in the long and somewhat tedious last segment where a van takes forever to fall off a bridge and bring the plot to a conclusion.
I wanted to yell, “Hit the goddam water, already!” But, I was in a movie theater.
Sure, go see it. But, if you are expecting something on the level of the first Matrix movie, or V, you will be disappointed.
B