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In the words of Morpheus "Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?" That pretty much gives you an idea as to what inception is all about. A lot of people will compare this movie to the Matrix because of some obvious similarities but Inception isn't just another Matrix rip-off. It's nothing really like the Matrix as this is more of a psychological thriller rather than a virtual reality cyberpunk action flick.

The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Dom Cobb, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Arthur, Ellen Page as Ariadne, Tom Hardy as Eames, Marion Cotillard as Mallorie "Mal" Cobb, Cillian Murphy as Robert Fischer, Jr., Ken Watanabe as Saito, Tom Berenger as Peter Browning, Dileep Rao as Yusuf, Pete Postlethwaite as Maurice Fischer, Robert's dying father, Lukas Haas as Nash, Michael Caine as Miles. The film is directed by Christopher Nolan who did other great films like The Dark Knight, The Prestige and Memento to name a few.

In the not too distant future it is now possible to invade people's thoughts while they are sleeping and extract information. That's exactly what Leo Dicap is, an idea and information extractor. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is his point man and they are basically thieves. They take information and ideas from important people. So they create a dream scenario and try to make the person they are extracting the information from believe it is real. Sometimes though in order to give them more time in the dream and to make a dream more believable they have to take their targets deeper into the dream realm. A dream within a dream. Now while extraction and taking ideas are a fairly common thing in this future, planting an idea or Inception is so rare that some believe it's not even possible. This is where this subconscious action flick takes off.

I really like the way Nolan filmed this movie. Not completely in sequence and a little surreal and experimental in the beginning. You feel like you're kind of being in a dream yourself. Now most dream movies like this tend to be bollocks. It starts off well enough but ends with a cop out at the end. "Oh he's dreaming that's why the movie didn't make any sense", tends to be a convenient ending. Inception is the one and only dream story I can think of that didn't do that. The story actually went out of its way to explain what is happening and why and therefore makes it believable. The way the story unraveled just keeps you hooked on and you won't even want to chew your popcorn too much as you will want to know what's going to happen next.

Having a good story is one thing but telling the story is just as important. They got both spot on. In fact the story was so good in that even without all the action in the movie I would have still liked it from a psychological thriller aspect. The action though does play its part in this rollercoaster of a movie and will make you hang at the edge of your seat. In case you didn't notice I like this movie. There have been few films that actually impress me in the way this film has. I know there is no such thing as a perfect film but I can't for the life of me think of a better film than this in the last few years. Now I might be a little biased because this film is exactly why I go to the cinemas. I love films that mess with your head and make you doubt things that you are so sure of. That's why I'm giving this film my very first perfect score.

My Movie Review rating 5.0/5.0