Dream Stealers

The film reacts to the senses, bashes them with images piling on more images. It is like running through a visionary maze where you can get easily lost in.

If that is the intention of Christopher Nolan's latest film, simply titled Inception, then he's hit it right on the head. He's managed to create a block buster film with a brain. Something that challenges your ideas when you are still compelled by the landscape of images that surrounds.

It is a film about ideas. Inception begins with several men trying to enter someone's dreams in hopes of pulling off a heist. In the dream, the character of Cobb played by Leonardo DeCapio searches for secrets belong to Saito, a very powerful and wealthy man.

However, the tables are turned on Cobb and his own men as the corporate owner knew they were trying to mingle with his own dreams. Instead, he wants to hire Cobb and a team to steal into the dreams of Robert Fischer Jr. who is a corporate rival of Saito... and suggest to him in the dream to disband his empire that was passed to him by his father.

The film reaches an interesting complex layering just as dreams do. There are tons of ideas in the film that surrounds the notion that you can go into someone's dreams and manipulate their feelings, their emotions, everything. Because dreams can be very inspiring.

It's the best film of the year. It is a very simple idea and yet pulls everything off without crashing. While it is very complex in is wealth of ideas, the director Nolan is able to give it some linear narrative. There's a definite story spearheading through the film. You can still follow the story with ease if you pay enough attention to it.

If you walk out of the movie for fifteen minutes, don't expect to understand it if you come back into it. The film needs your undivided attention.

What gives the story the kick is the idea itself. And what a scary thing. Dreams can be very frightening. And to think you are trapped in a dream is on the same level as falling into a coma. You can live entire lives in a dream because time moves so much slowly. It seems that Nolan has done his homework on dreams which gives it life.

There isn't a need for big special effects. It is the interesting camera work that makes the dreams work very well. And you use the FX whenever needed to create a more lucid dream world much like static state of limbo. Where the prison of dreams could trap you forever and make you remain in a corner of darkness.

But Cobb's past life interferes with the group's mission: his dead wife comes back to haunt him in his dreams. And she is like a force of fury, angry, very intrusive. And this becomes an added danger to the rest of the team. His guilt becomes a weighty thing.

Nolan puts on a very delicate film with a sharp script that makes sense. But it is the gallery of images that works so well in this picture leaving you in a confusion of dreams: lifting bridges, exploding buildings, cliffs falling into a disarray, all of this creates burning thoughts that stay inside your head long after you leave the theaters.

There is one particular scene that is far reaching and excellent. It is set inside the hotel corridors where actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt fights his way through several dream assassins. It's a very tension filled part of the film that is in closed spaces, very airtight hallways, which gives it more discomfort. But it's very brilliantly done and Gordon-Levitt spent many weeks getting into tune to accomplish this scene. It is like you're watching fight inside a spinning cage. It's one of the highlights of the film.

The film has many Batman veterans if you look around long enough. You can see Michael Caine in a short appearance, Ken Wanatabe, Cillian Murphy. They have all been in the revamped Batman film series of recent years. Not to mention the director himself Nolan who have heralded the Batman films from within the directorial seat.

There's an interesting theme going on in his films: complexity. It seems that Nolan likes to take very complex ideas and try to give them a story He did the same thing with the film Memento about a man with memory loss who tries to build life once more from shattered remains. His film The Dark Knight is a moral play between chaos and society.

But here, the film gives leverage to dreams has never been explored in this way before. It's an interesting idea here.

More interestingly, however, is the actor Leoonardo DeCapio. I have never been overly fond of the actor myself with his range of acting. But he gives his best performance here as a man who hides his wounds inside his dreams. The more you learn of him, the more he is seen as a hero with flaws. And they are serious flaws. But he has noble intentions with the things he does. He wants to simply go back to his children that were left by his dead wife.

You don't need to look any further if you want a different type of summer movie. The film is a tour of dreams that takes you to the private matters of the human soul. And it is probably the one place where you shouldn't look. Because dreams do have a way of snapping back at you. The rules are off. And everything counts on how real the dreams seem. It's quite a novelty.