Inception

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Year:	2010
Country of origin:	USA / UK
Director:	Christopher Nolan
Genre:	Sci fi action thinker.
Starring:	Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe
Rating:	5/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/
Tagline:	Your mind is the scene of the crime
Favourite line:	"I bought the airline….it seemed neater."

Inception is the best movie ever made.
Inception is the most intelligent movie ever made.
Inception is the most ambitious concept ever to be committed to celluloid.
I have read all of the above sentiments with regards Christopher Nolan's latest offering and, whilst it is a very, very good film, don't be fooled by the hype machine.

The plot:
Leonardo plays Cobb, a man haunted by a traumatic event in his life, an event that means he is never allowed to return home to see his children. Cobb is also an Extractor, a man with the ability, through training not supernature, to enter people's dreams to 'extract' information. He does this with the aid of an Architect, a person adept at sculpting dreamscapes that fool the sleeping victim into revealing the information, no matter the secrecy.
When Cobb is given the opportunity to do 'one last job' at first he resists, but when the carrot is dangled before him that on successful completion he will, at last, be able to return home, he agrees.
The job?
Inception.
Instead of stealing an idea, can he place one within the mind of another and fool them into thinking that they thought of the idea themselves, independently.

Clever, no?
And it is clever.
This is a clever movie.
This is a movie that is chock full of smarts, and no mistakin'.
But that does not make it quite as awesome as everyone else seems to be claiming for, along with the IQ, come flaws:
It's too long by about twenty minutes, with many scenes stretched to breaking point.
The Cobb 'haunted by his past' dynamic I could have done without, thanks all the same.
The ending was a bit predictable, with most of the revelations flagged up well in advance.
I'll balance that out with the plus points:
The physical special effects were a real breath of fresh air in these sterile days of CGI overkill.
The performances all round are superb.
The action sequences were deftly handled.
But it is certainly not a masterclass.
In fact, if you want the truth, I think this movie is actually indicative of just how far we have allowed our standards to fall, of just what we have allowed Hollywood to get away with for too many long years.
Movies should challenge us, movies should stretch us, as this one surely does, but the fact that it feels so rare, so strange is in itself a savage indictment of the movie industry as a whole.
Heh, I'm not slating Nolan here: he's done his job consistently brilliantly for the best part of a decade now, it's just a shame we have allowed the situation where others feel they don't have to follow suit.
So, before you bemoan the lack of other quality, intelligent big budget movies take a look at your DVD collection, or Netflix queue. If a single McG or Michael Bay movie is present, ask yourself this simple question:
Am I partially to blame?