I wandered along to this as it was pissing down with rain and I didn't have much else to do. It's the new flick by Christopher Nolan starring Leo DiC, and comes with a number of big ups from prominent reviewers.
I came out with very mixed feelings. Visually it's superb, utterly gorgeous in fact. Leo is certainly an excellent actor, and of late has been choosing some interesting roles. I think where I felt let down was the story. To quickly summarise, the plot revolves around using dreams as a source of information, or in the main case of the movie, to plant ideas.
I came away thinking that it was lacking something, and that was probably empathetic characters. None of them are bad, or good, but all are difficult to empathise with. The plot is quite lumbering in places, and typically of Hollywood, certain key elements are laboured (witness the 'totem'). The movie seems to collapse under the pressure of trying to be too intelligent, too knowing, and that annoyed me. I think it's excellent that Hollywood made this, an intelligent thriller, but maybe, ironically, a better movie would have been made with less money. The concept was interesting, and should have held the movie together, but again felt too laboured. It's almost as if the writers were thinking this is cool, and we all know about it, but can't assume the audience will, so let's explain everything.
I think it's worth seeing, and probably on the big screen. 6/10.
2 comments:
We both enjoyed Inception - am a fan of Nolan's stuff although sometimes it can be a little long. Will be worth a re-watch. And it is great that finally something watchable is coming out of mainstream Hollywood! I'm somewhat lost to understand the confusion about this film - it's hardly rocket science to follow you just need to pay attention (wait, there's the problem). Pity people can't just follow a story without having things spelled out in black and white. I'd agree about Leo-babe, he's certainly improved from the fresh-faced johnny cast against the ever-annoying Claire Danes. Enjoyed my Russian film festie this evening :)
I thought it was clever and poignant- really a film about loss and longing more than anything. It also messed with me visually/cognitively. I felt like I was dreaming when I came out and I kept feeling like the road was going to start to rise and things were going to start exploding. Having a migraine, as unfortunately I did, probably helped that effect along somewhat, of course.
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