Early Review: Inception (Second Take)

This was originally going to be a lengthy review with spoilers. Unfortunately, even my unscrupulous conscience couldn't bear spoiling Inception for you. It's just that shockingly good, and you must see it for yourself. So what can I tell you?

Dylan's review yesterday hit the nail on the head: Inception is a thinking man's blockbuster. It's an incredibly thoughtful, gritty science-fiction movie disguised as a fast-paced action blockbuster. The whole movie carries the weight of years of obvious contemplation; Chris Nolan has said that he spent the the better part of a decade thinking about Inception, and it shows with every moment and every detail. I truly believe Inception has a story which could not have been conceived in the regular Hollywood development cycle. The deeper Inception pulled me into its frantic multi-layered storytelling, the more I saw the undeniable value of having reticent patience and pitch-perfect timing. Its degree of intelligence makes Inception everything the Matrix movies failed to achieve with their shallow pseudo-philosophy and pretentious cultural-for-the-sake-of-cultural allusions.

Not a single character was miscast. No scene felt out of place. No piece of dialogue felt forced. No musical phrase in the score felt distracting. Every part of the movie comes together in such a brilliant, unobtrusive fashion that you might literally forget you're sitting in a theater. You're not watching Inception, you're experiencing it. Experiencing a story. This is a level of film-making so incredibly rare that you can't help but give Warner Brothers props for taking a chance on such a complicated, unmarketable movie.

Please, go see Inception. It's a masterpiece viewing experience that makes you think this is what it must have felt like to be in the audience at Dresden the first time Mozart's Symphony No. 40 was performed. Now go see it and try to resist counting down the days to The Dark Knight Returns.