Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his team including Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Eames (Tom Hardy) and Saito (Ken Watanabe), already experts in ‘excavation’ – penetrating and deducing the contents of people’s dreams – now decide to try their hand at ‘inception’, the planting of an idea in the sub-conscious. Their target is the son (Cillian Murphy) of a family patriarch (Pete Postlewaite) in order to stop that family’s company dominating world energy supplies. To do this they enlist the support of student, Ariadne (Ellen Page) but in the process find Cobb’s own sub-conscious demons a barrier to progress once they start entering the various levels of the dreams they come to possess.

Sound complex? Well it is, exceedingly! Right from the start, writer and director, Christopher Nolan has Inception burst forth and many may find they lose their way from early on. The dreams are multi layered, each existing in its own time zone and all possessing baddies with guns who don’t seem to be able to aim straight. But as much as the dreams are constructs of the imagination, the inconsistencies of plot add to the viewing dilemmas with the impact of dying in a dream just one imponderable.

In many ways, this film has its similarities with DiCaprio’s Shutter Island from earlier this year but none of the acting finesse he showed in that. This is for the most part a one fast pace anxiety fix for DiCaprio. Page adds a pretty face and Gordon-Levitt is excellent as the straight laced technician of the team. The sets are extraordinary as is the imagination that dreamt this up. But at the end one had to ask why all the bother. Sci-fi fans will love it and a second viewing may assist in understanding but many I suspect will allow the non-stop action to entertain well after the machinations of the plot have passed them by.

Kryztoff Rating – 3.5K