Inception

YOUR MIND IS THE SCENE OF THE CRIME.

What a cool poster tagline. Along with an amazing cast and an intriguing trailer, I’ve been wanting to see this movie for months, but somehow ended up being one of the last of my friends to watch it. It was all over everyone’s Facebook statuses being described as “amazing”, “mind blowing”, “great mind fuck” etc. Did it live up to the hype? Well, it was a good movie. Leo was superb, as usual, but the supporting cast was very good as well, although at some points there was very little dailogue, as with most action-ish flicks. The visuals were beautiful, nothing overly sci-fi but some effects were too obviously Warner Brother-esque. The plot…oh the plot. That’s what I have my issues with. It was not “amazing” nor did it blow or fuck my mind.

The plot sounded complicated and I was fully ready to be taken on this trippy, outer body experience that would make me question my very existence with this kind of plot. That experience never came. It was actually quite straight forward, and simple, up to the point where you didn’t really have to think, because everything actually made some sense, it was just executed in a complicated, cinematic way with plenty of sidestory and visual distractions. I’m not dumping on this movie, since I liked it way more than films like Matrix or Vanilla Sky (wonder if anybody made the Vanilla Sky comparison yet, because it reminds me more of that than The Matrix) but I was really hoping to have my world rocked. It’s not that anybody ruined the movie for me, but just hearing that the ending was “open-ended and up to interpretation” and actually seeing why made me internally roll my eyes. It was a serene and peaceful ending, Christoper Nolan was probably trying to make it eerily ambiguous and for me it came off as boring and groan inducing.

Despite all my bitching and nit picking, I did like the movie and I would probably give it an 8/10. Leo and that Gordon-Levitt kid made the movie for me, Cillian Murphy had a weak character to work with but his very presence was good enough to add to the strangeness of the movie, and everyone else was good/OK but could’ve been played by anyone else. I can’t criticize the visuals though, it was definitely a treat for the eyes. My favorites were probably Gordon-Levitt’s hotel hallway scenes and when Ellen Page’s character first discovers she can manipulate the architecture of the street.

I say, just watch the movie already if you haven’t. It has good elements in it and it’s been some time since an original screenplay has made it as a box office hit. Why should all the remakes and vampires get all the glory??