The concept is cool and all, but think about how dreams really function for a second, and it teeters on the brink of wrongheadedness. Why are these mindscapes like sterile set pieces in a middling Bond movie?
Much as he did with The Dark Knight in 2008 (getting a little help from Pixar’s Wall-E), the pressure is on Christopher Nolan, that wizard of besuited gloom and thoughtful action movies, to salvage the filmgoing summer.
Inception has been awaited by its core audience as some kind of second coming, even before anyone knew anything: the movie’s fiendish, house-of-cards architecture has been a Hollywood state secret from the start.
A dream team is assembled: newbie world-designer Ariadne (Ellen Page), identity forger Eames (Tom Hardy, a dry gift here), pharmacist Yusuf (Dileep Rao) and Cobb’s regular point man Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).
Their target is Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy, precise and valuable), the son of an ailing energy tycoon (Pete Postlethwaite) whose business empire Saito wants broken up after his death.