Inception

Row, row, row your boat, Gently down the stream, Merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream.

That nursery rhyme is very apt for this movie. Inception means the beginning or creation of something. In the movie, inception is the microcosm of an idea that once planted to a person through a dream and accepted becomes the basis of that person’s thoughts, opinion, other ideas, and even his or her personality.

Cobb(Leonardo DiCaprio) is an “extractor”, someone who retrieves information from a person by going into that person’s consciousness and extracting the information. He is hired by Saito (Ken Watanabe) to attempt the heretofore untried inception on a competitor. As in a typical heist movie, he then assembles a crew to do the job and after the usual drama, set about doing it. Of course, since most of these happen in a dream, you definitely can’t expect the usual.

But it is a heist movie in the same vein as The Italian Job and The Thomas Crown Affair. That’s tough company but even if Inception is not one of the best heist movies, it’s certainly one of the more imaginative ones. It has action but it isn’t as edgy as The Matrix, to which it can and will be compared to. It has some twists but it doesn’t attempt to befuddle the user: Whenever things get a little bit complicated, the characters make sure to explain everything (sometimes a little too much). But put together, it’s a well-built, riveting movie.

Rating: 4/5