Inception is a sci-fi thriller that explores the dream world with all its episodic and unusual scenarios.  It is an unnerving and special-effects-laden journey into the once-thought-to-be private realm of dream sleep where people can invade your very subconscious.  That’s right.  Your dreams are no longer your own.

Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Dom Cobb, a specialist who is able to invade people’s dreams for the right price and extract secrets.  The movie opens up to such an occurrence, as DiCaprio and his team are already involved in an extraction process where the subject, Saito, is unaware of what is happening.  But, of course, things don’t go as planned and DiCaprio finds himself with an offer he can’t refuse.  Saito will clear a past criminal charge if he implants an idea into a corporate enemy via a dream.

There’s plenty of action, plot twists, and special effects.  But, you have to pay attention, otherwise, you’ll get lost quickly.  And that was the problem.  With dreams in dreams and multiple conversations at different levels of dreams between multiple characters, if you blinked you could miss something that was important.  I found it a bit disconcerting.  Perhaps I have an undiagnosed case of ADHD, but I found the mental effort necessary to keep up with the plot to be a bit exhausting.

In addition, I actually found myself getting bored about halfway through the movie.  It wasn’t because the special effects weren’t good enough or the plot line wasn’t adequate.  It’s just that there was so much talking about what was going on, instead of showing us, that I found myself wanting to see more of what this plot could provide.  Think about it.  With the special effects capability available in today’s movies, and with a plot that allows almost anything to be accomplished, you’d think that Hollywood could have provided more amazing scenes.  They didn’t, at least not enough for me.  Come on, dazzle me.

Personally, I found the ending to be rather predictable and disappointing.  On the drive home with my friends, I told them how the movie should have ended–in my opinion.  Each person said that my idea was better.  I’ll provide it at the end of this review.

The acting was excellent.  The special effects were superb.  The plot was intriguing.  There was no excessive foul language and no sex scenes.  Still, for me, the movie did not reach its potential and left me a little letdown.  I’m glad I saw it, but I don’t plan on seeing it again.

Spoiler alert:

In my opinion, a better plot ending would have been to have the whole movie be a dream in which the team had been working all along to extract information necessary from Saito (Ken Watanabe). On the plane, when Saito dials the phone number, that number could have been the code, the information that the team had been looking for the whole time.  They all could then wake up and Saito would have been had.