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Inception review
Jul. 22nd, 2010 01:52 pmI had rather been looking forward to Inception for the last few weeks, which isn't usually the right way to approach going to the cinema. Luckily, it didn't disappoint and confirmed Christopher Nolan as a director I'm a definite fan of.
Despite reports to the contrary, I didn't find the film difficult to follow at all (though I did come out of the cinema with quite a headache, so maybe I was concentrating more than I'd thought!). I also didn't find any of the plot twists all that surprising, having figured them out long before they occurred, but that didn't detract from the fact that it was a very clever, well-thought-out and engaging story. The only drawback was that the internal consistency of how dreamers exit dreams before the time limit didn't quite hold up, but that was only a minor niggle, and it's possible I misunderstood the explanation anyway.
There were two or three very funny moments, lots of intrigue and action (the fight in shifting gravity was a stand-out), likeable characters (including some entertainingly flirtatious banter between two of the male members of the team, which I'm sure most people would claim I'm imagining), some effective angst (though the tone of the protagonist's back story was very reminiscent of Memento to my mind) and an excellent cast - Pete Postlethwaite and Michael Caine in particular completely wasted with only about three minutes' screen time each.
The film was perhaps a little overlong - I started wondering how long there was left to go about 30 minutes before the end - but it kept me pretty well gripped throughout, and had a satisfying ending, which was something that had worried me early on.
All in all, a very good night out, and one of the best films I've seen this year, if not the best (can't tell without tracking back through the year's reviews, which I can't be bothered to do right now!).
Highly recommended.
Despite reports to the contrary, I didn't find the film difficult to follow at all (though I did come out of the cinema with quite a headache, so maybe I was concentrating more than I'd thought!). I also didn't find any of the plot twists all that surprising, having figured them out long before they occurred, but that didn't detract from the fact that it was a very clever, well-thought-out and engaging story. The only drawback was that the internal consistency of how dreamers exit dreams before the time limit didn't quite hold up, but that was only a minor niggle, and it's possible I misunderstood the explanation anyway.
There were two or three very funny moments, lots of intrigue and action (the fight in shifting gravity was a stand-out), likeable characters (including some entertainingly flirtatious banter between two of the male members of the team, which I'm sure most people would claim I'm imagining), some effective angst (though the tone of the protagonist's back story was very reminiscent of Memento to my mind) and an excellent cast - Pete Postlethwaite and Michael Caine in particular completely wasted with only about three minutes' screen time each.
The film was perhaps a little overlong - I started wondering how long there was left to go about 30 minutes before the end - but it kept me pretty well gripped throughout, and had a satisfying ending, which was something that had worried me early on.
All in all, a very good night out, and one of the best films I've seen this year, if not the best (can't tell without tracking back through the year's reviews, which I can't be bothered to do right now!).
Highly recommended.
