DUM DUM DUM Inception review bizatches!

Ok brace yourselves, for I am about to partake in a review of Inception. Christopher Nolan’s clever for the sake of clever high concept action drama about people who infiltrate other people’s dreams for the sake of discovering repressed information from the subconscious mind. I can already hear the collective ooh’s as you take all of that in. It might sound like I do not appreciate this film, while I feel it has been slightly overhyped, I greatly appreciate this movie. Christopher Nolan once again does a stellar job and Leonardo Di Caprio continues to justify his position as one of my favourite actors. If you can get your head around the rather convoluted plot then this is definitely a film worth watching.

Lets dive straight in shall we; I will make my attempt at explaining the plot for all you simpletons out there. Firstly the movie begins rather normally, a meeting between Leonardo Di Caprio’s character Dom Cobb and Mr Saito played by Ken Wannabe. All seems to be going well albeit slightly tense. This tension is pushed up with the appearance of the homicidal Mallorie Cobb, who does her best to spoil things, at this point I was left wondering who is this crazy lady. Little did I know that she was the least of my concerns right now, as we soon discover that this is all a dream. That’s right Cobb, Saito and Cobb’s right hand man Arthur played by Joseph Gordon – Levitt are all inside somebody else’s mind, cue several WTF’s from confused audiences. To cut a long story short here, everything goes tits up and soon all the characters are flung from the dream by the dreamers subconscious, who by the way will attack anyone who is not supposed to be there, now that’s so edgy and cool isn’t it.

After this failure the story moves on to the development of the films protagonist Cobb, who apparently is on the run after he was accused of murdering Mallorie (his wife) and is just looking to get back home to his children. All of this is explained to his father, played by the evergreen Michael Caine. It transpires that Cobb used to be an architect, which is someone who is used to design a world within a dream for the dreamer. However he has had to stop this and seeing as his last architect failed he is looking for a new one, which is made easier by the fact that his father teaches architecture at a university. Cobb asks for a student to which Caine’s character reluctantly agrees and supplies him with the contact details for Ariadne played by Ellen Page. After a few scenes of explaining all of this dream stuff to her, including putting her into a dream without her realizing and then watching her turn the street upside down, Cobb has his architect, in the meantime it is discovered that Mallorie has a habit of turning up in Cobb’s dreams, crazy bitch!

Now for the true nitty gritty of the film, essentially Cobb has been asked to perform an act of Inception by Mr Saito. What is Inception I hear you ask; well I shall explain you impatient bastards. Inception is the action of planting an idea into a person’s subconscious mind. In this case Mr Saito wishes to eliminate his business competitor Maurice Fischer, played by the late Pete Poselthwaite who is currently in his deathbed. The idea is to place the idea in his son’s head Robert Fischer played by Cillian Murphy that he is to inherit the company, which of course is not true, however if he believes this his incompetence will surely see Mr Saito become the king pin of whatever business he is involved with. I am aware that what I just said didn’t make much sense, but this is a hard film to summarize. But anyway moving on, the method used will see our gang of infiltrators enter a multi layered dream that consists of three dreams within a dream (ouch my brain) in these dreams the infiltrators will try to implant the memory into the mind of Robert Fischer and ride a series of kicks, which in other words are a means of emerging from the dream state. In the meantime Cobb’s wife Mallorie attempts to sabotage them at every point she can.

Whoa I’m exhausted after that. After many high jinks and impressive sequences we come to the end of the film. After successfully carrying out the act of inception and defeating the subconscious killer Mallorie, Cobb emerges from his dream to return home to his children. I shall now mention something that I should have mentioned at the start, and that is the use of totem’s which are specific objects held by each dreamer that remind them whether they are dreaming or are in the real world. Cobb’s totem consists of a small spinning top, which if he spins and it falls indicates he is dreaming, ok you got that? Well the ending of the movie where Cobb has supposedly returned to his children provides us with an intriguing finale. For you see Cobb upon returning to his home spins the top and walks off while the audience are left watching whether or not it will fall, then BOOM cut to black and we are left wondering whether Cobb actually managed to emerge from the dream. Cue an extra round of WTF’s once more from the audience, although not from me because I totally guessed that was going to happen, win point for me!

All in all this movie was thoroughly enjoyable and I would recommend it to anyone. Be wary however when watching it, you do have to pay close attention otherwise you will miss something and all of a sudden you will be lost.

Christopher Nolan has once again surpassed himself with another brilliantly directed movie, it looks great and you can’t go wrong when Hans Zimmer is doing the soundtrack. I still feel it will fall short of winning the Oscar though, but it is a worthy nominee and I look forward to Nolan’s third Dark Knight movie, It’s gonna be tight y’all !!!

Mr Nolan, I give your film a thouroughly respectable 8/10

 

(Oh by the way, I am aware that I have missed out several important aspects of the film in this review and quite frankly the structure is just as convoluted as the film in question, but this is only my second review and I can’t be asked to alter it that much because my fingers ache and I really should be getting on with the work I am supposed to be doing. PEACE!)

I have an update, my review of The Expendables !!!!

I know I said I would be reviewing Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban next, however after a debate with my housemate I felt compelled to provide my thoughts on an absolute monstrosity of cinema. The Expendables !

Well where to begin; let’s start with the plot shall we. Ok we are done... just kidding but I’m not exaggerating that much, the lack of an original storyline for a film that received so much hype was utterly astonishing. It is the same old tired plot that has been spewed out in numerous unimaginative action films of the past. Somewhere in a lawless country there is a brutal military dictator, the American government has so far failed to attack them with grenade launchers and fighter jets. Therefore it is down to Sylvester Stallone and his gang of rabble rousers to go in single handed and defeat this man who is killing innocent people. Their methods... go in and shoot the fuck out of anyone who is holding a gun. So yeah there is your plot, there really isn’t much else to tell in all honesty.

Of course with a bad plot comes bad writing and this movie is a prime example of Stallone sitting down with a pen and writing ‘And the man said Fuck you and then shot the man in the face.’ I am of course being sarcastic, but watching this film really made me wonder how the script made it past studio executives. My prime example of this hastily written script is the appearance of Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose inexplicable cameo can only be explained as a means of getting people into the cinema. In fact, if I had been writing the film and that moment in the script came up I can imagine the response. Why is this character here, he has very few lines, makes no impact on the plot and has no purpose in the story whatsoever. Even Mickey Rourke in my opinion fails to make the writing seem believable. Rourke’s role despite his obvious acting abilities is agonisingly small and I can’t help but feel that a bigger role for him in the film would have helped it just that little bit, but alas we have Jason Statham, who can kick people lest we forget.

Where shall we go next, oh yes the special effects of the film. In other words, the bit where things get blown up, people get shot and planes attack a small docking bay (yes that bit actually happens). This film was billed as some sort of spectacular action extravaganza that united all the action stars of the past. Therefore one would expect an impressive array of special effects and pyrotechnics, sadly this is merely another area that this film fails to meet expectations. Of course there are plenty of guns and explosions, but it is nothing we haven’t seen before in any number of action films, from Aliens to Die Hard. By far my favourite moment of the film however is the moment when Terry Crew’s character (the hilariously named Hale Caesar) blows up a sniper tower with want can only be described as a machine gun that fires cannon balls. That one moment just about summed up the film for me; whenever the plot was going nowhere someone would just blow something up or kill the nearest henchman in any number of brutal ways.

To put it bluntly I really really did not like this movie. Actually that’s not blunt enough, in all honesty this film was one of the worst pieces of cinema I’ve ever been subjected to and I’ve seen Norbit. Its utter Fuck wittery was nothing but endless bad acting and shoddy dialogue that made me want to yell at the cinema screen, which I would have done had my friend not wanted to genuinely see the film. My one piece of advice is do not see this film, honestly you are not missing out. If someone tells you it is good harmless fun, they are lying if you are honestly interested in seeing a good film then believe me this movie is not for you. However if you are a person who enjoys watching something your 7 year old brother couldn’t have written during the adverts for SpongeBob, then fill your boots.

My rating of this film comes in at a rather terrible 2/10. One point for Mickey Rourke’s appearance and one point for the fact that Stallone actually bothered.