Inception

Dir Christopher Nolan.

Nolan seems to be setting himself as one of the foremost directors of his generation, and if he keeps putting out films of this calibre, then he's going to be a giant in years to come. 'Inception' is just as well made, and just as engaging as Nolan's last film; 'The Dark Knight'.

The film is about a strange technology where by people can enter each others dreams in order to steal secrets, plant idea's or just live in worlds of their own creation. One of the concepts in the film is that dream time happens much faster than real time, so one hour in the dream state is a few minutes in real time. The kicker is, in the dream, you can create your own reality, so in effect you can also create the means to enter a second dream state, and a third and a fourth and so on. The problem is, the time difference becomes exponentially greater each time one delves deeper. So one minute in real time can be sixty or more years by the time you've removed yourself four times from real time.

An added complication to entering a dream state by artificial means is that the dream state is affected by what happens in real time. So if some pushes you in real time, the dream state you are in reacts in some way. Usually dramatically.

To make matters worse, you need to set up some kind of mechanism in order to bring you back. This is known as a 'kick' and if it fails, then the only way to return to real time is to die in the dream state. The alternative is to wait for however long it takes for the dream state to run its natural course, which might mean you age sixty years in your mind, whilst in real time a mere five minutes have passed.

This is the sort of thing I used to bend my head around when I was a child. Its curious to see this kind of thing made into a film, with a narrative, plot lines and all sewn up at the end... or not. Watch the film if your in the mood for something as slightly old fashioned as an action film with a decent story. The acting is good, though I'm not a big fan of DeCaprio's always frowning face or tantrum-like voice, and the ambience is threatening/moody.