Monday 16 August 2010

Inception

Over the weekend I finally got to see 'Inception', of which a lot seems to have been written and lots of money made. I'm in two minds (or, if you've seen the film, maybe several).

It's an interesting idea that someone can go into your dreams and steal your thoughts or, alternatively, go in and plant new thoughts. There was a nice stab at trying to illustrate the mechanics of this to make it believable but it left too much unexplained for my liking - if you're going to explain then do it properly or not at all. I also wasn't convinced by some of the characters - why were they involved in this? how were they involved? why did they care about each other? or not as the case might be. It felt like a sketch rather than a portrait.

Some of the special effects were great, like bending Paris back over on itself and the crumbling cityscape being eroded by the sea at the ultimate depth of the dream. Others were less convincing, like the bad guys shooting out all the windows of the minibus they were travelling in and yet missed hitting anyone. Is that likely? And the penultimate sequence of a James Bond-esque snow scene was a little bit over the top, particularly how all these dreamers suddenly become trained commandos. I know it's a dream, but, c'mon.

All in all it's enjoyable bunkum and a fun way to spend a couple of hours but not something I'd necessarily want to see again.

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