Invictus

INVICTUS

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Invictus can be looked at two ways: 1) It's the worst sequel to District 9 ever made. I mean, how do you do a movie set in South Africa without any Prawns? Where are the fucking Prawns?! 2) More accurately, Invictus is a fine, noble film by Clint Eastwood about Nelson Mandela's Presidency over South Africa and his attempts to unite his country after decades of apartheid. Mandela's fierce determination to find ways to bring the minority whites and blacks of South Africa together finds focus via the Springboks, South Africa's rugby team, whom Mandela is determined to inspire to win the World Cup, thereby inspiring the entire nation. Mandela forms a friendship with the Springboks' captain, Francois Pienaar. Both men are pillars of nobility, each admiring the other without a hint of conflict; any skepticism or hostility regarding Mandela is left to either Mandela's underlings or Pienaar's teammates, all of whom fall in lockstep with Mandela's unifying vision by the end. As Mandela, Morgan Freeman does admirable work, while Matt Damon takes on the South African accent successfully, though he sports a nose prosthetic that's only slightly less distracting than the one he wore in Ocean's Thirteen. Rugby is never fully explained to the non-rugby-indoctrinated audience - Harry Potter took much more care in laying out the intricacies of Quidditch - so it was difficult to invest in the big rugby match at the end, which seemed like a lot of sweaty, bleeding dudes piling on top of each other. Much more powerful was Damon leading his rugby team on a visit to Robben Island and seeing the tiny jail cell (46664) Mandela occupied for 30 years. I'll never forget Nelson Mandela's prison cell number for as long as I live because Bono used to put it on the big screen at U2 concerts and ask everyone in the audience to text it during the "Vertigo" tour.

Piranha 3D (*****)

PIRANHA 3D

** SPOILERS **

Piranha 3D cannot be discussed in polite company, and I mean that as a superlative. Boobs! Boobs! Blood! Blood! Piranha 3D has a simple agenda and it fulfills it with a shameless, go-for-broke, anything goes glee that's reprehensible if you're a churl, and yet, frankly honorable. Opening with an homage to Jaws featuring Richard Dreyfuss himself, Piranha 3D freely abandons any lofty aspirations (why would a piranha movie have lofty aspirations?) and dives headlong into copious amounts of viscera-soaked schlock and soft core porn.  An earthquake exposes underground caverns in an Arizona lake that unleashes "thousands" of prehistoric piranhas that had been thought be extinct for two million years. Sheriff Elizabeth Shue and scientist Adam Scott discover the threat of the piranha too late to prevent the alcohol-soaked orgy of scantily clad spring breakers partying at the lake from becoming fish food. Meanwhile Shue's son Steven R. McQueen and the girl he loves, Jessica Szohr, fall under the sway of smarmy, thinly-veiled Joe Francis parody Jerry O'Connell and his harem of delectable porn stars, played gamely by the very bouncy Kelly Brook and Riley Steele. Brook and Steele deserve special Academy Awards for their eye-popping extended skinny dipping sequence, and then the Academy should retire that Oscar after they accept. Character development is non-existent, but Scott and Shue transform into credible action heroes; Scott dispatches piranha with a shotgun (of course) as he zips around on a jet ski, while Shue, in her forties, asserts herself as the sexiest woman in the picture even with all the young bare flesh on display. The way our heroes manage to slay the piranha is a Mythbusters episode waiting to happen. Appearances by Ving Rhames (his pride wasn't fuckin' with him here. Fuck pride!), Christopher Lloyd ("Great Scott!"), Dina Meyer, Paul Scheer, and Eli Roth (who goes down in ghastly fashion) add that extra layer of "Hey, what's (s)he doing here?!", but the real stars are the grotesque CGI piranha and the jaw dropping amounts of carnage on the screen. Piranha 3D's money sequences, especially when the piranha attack and massacre the hundreds of spring breakers in the third act, are a shocking, relentless, unbelievably depraved (in an admirable way) barrage of young bodies being torn apart, flesh being ripped off of faces, piranha bursting through faces, and gallons upon gallons of blood. Even the tease for a sequel at the very end is shameless. And kind of wonderful.

The Other Guys

THE OTHER GUYS

** SPOILERS **

You ever hear a guy tell a joke, get a laugh and then decide the best way to follow up the joke he just told was to tell it again? That's The Other Guys. In a live action cartoon version of New York City narrated by the godly omniscience of Ice-T, Will Farrell and Mark Wahlberg are a pair of desk-bound, going-nowhere detectives handling the paperwork of human demolition derby supercops Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Jackson and Johnson get their swaggering asses killed, leaving a hole open for another duo to step up and become the alpha males of the department. Despite loathing each other - Farrell is a straight-arrow nerd and Wahlberg is a competent but desperate powder keg - the Other Guys get involved in cracking some sort of  bewildering ponzi scheme involving Steve Coogan that absolutely no one in the audience understood or gave two shits about. There is some funny stuff in The Other Guys; the first act is a gonzo bonanza of oddly clever one-liners and bizarre behavior (especially the jaw dropping scene of how Johnson and Jackson bite it). Wahlberg's utter disbelief that Farrell is married to Eva Mendes and his infatuation with her draws some real laughs. By the mid-point, The Other Guys starts to repeat itself and its jokes ad nauseam, staying far too late at the party while tacking on badly choreographed and banal action sequences. Was Michael Keaton's running joke about not realizing he constantly quotes TLC song lyrics a joke worth going to the well to over and over? On the other hand, The Other Guys does some amusing riffs on Lethal Weapon: the suicide jumper scene, the leads getting blown back by an explosion, when the renegade cop has dinner at home with his straight laced partner and learns to like him. The "bribery" jokes cracked me up, but I liked the flashback that Wahlberg ended up in the police doghouse for shooting Derek Jeter (I'd say that makes him a hero) more than Farrell's backstory of being a pimp in college. The movie certainly didn't need a role reversal between the leads tacked on, nor did a subplot of Farrell and Mendes breaking up and getting back together add anything but length to the running time. Then again, with cameos from David Wallace from The Office and Jean-Ralphio from Parks and Recreation, it was good to have a reminder that the NBC fall season is right around the corner. Also, stay away from cocaine-covered cars and "soup kitchens".

Batman: Under The Red Hood

BATMAN: UNDER THE RED HOOD

** SPOILERS **

Batman: Under The Red Hood opens with a bizarre redo of one of the most famous and tragic moments in the history of Batman: The Joker beating Robin II (Jason Todd) to death with a crowbar and then exploding him, as depicted in the seminal "A Death in the Family" story. Bizarre, because suddenly Joker is murdering Robin in the Himalayas instead of Beirut in the comics, while Ra's Al-Ghul, who wasn't in the comics story, frets about it in his mountain stronghold. Five years later, the Red Hood, a new masked crimelord-slash-vigilante stalks the streets of Gotham. Batman and his first Robin Dick Grayson, now Nightwing, are on the case, and gradually uncover the identity of the Red Hood - gasp! - it's the late Jason Todd! (Resurrected via the Lazarus Pit by a penitent Ra's Al-Ghul.)

Under The Red Hood is steeped in Batlore both old school (Joker's origin as the Red Hood as depicted in the classic "The Killing Joke", flashbacks to how Batman meets Jason Todd and makes him Robin) and recent (Black Mask ruling the Gotham Underworld). The main plot starts off awkwardly; Batman and Nightwing randomly battle and defeat Amazo, the One Man Justice League, while the thugs they capture provide forehead-slapping exposition to the audience - "That's Nightwing! He was the first Robin!" Gradually, the plot thickens involving The Joker and Black Mask, who looks exactly like Captain America's arch enemy The Red Skull, only, you know, with a black mask. There's some nonsense involving Red Hood employing Black Mask's henchmen, then killing them, then robot ninjas coming after Red Hood until Batman shows up. Batman and Red Hood fight and fight and fight and fight and fight - sometimes together, sometimes against each other, sometimes Nightwing's there, then he's conveniently injured and sits the denouement out.

Jason Todd's convoluted master plan to reunite himself and his mentor Batman with The Joker doesn't make any sense and is riddled with plot holes galore. The biggest one was Joker and Red Hood falling into Gotham River while Batman, flying overhead in the Batwing, receives a voice mail from Red Hood: "I've got him! I'll meet you in Crime Alley!" Oh? And how did Jason Todd manage to drag the Joker from the middle of the river all the way to Crime Alley undetected? Later, the Red Hood unmasks himself to reveal he is Jason Todd, but beneath his mask, he's wearing his Robin mask. Let me get this straight: he's wearing a mask under his mask? Shoddy comic book plotting and dialogue by Judd Winnick aside (and you know it's Winnick because one character calls another a "brain donor") the morality play in the final showdown between Jason Todd and Batman was well done, with the Joker providing some funny commentary. (And luckily, Joker didn't overhear Red Hood calling Batman "Bruce".)

Under The Red Hood employs a more anime design than Batman: The Animated Series to great effect, especially with the chase sequences around Gotham. The voice acting was better than average for a DC Universe cartoon. Bruce Greenwood does a convincing job growling like the beloved voice of Batman Kevin Conroy. Jensen Ackles and Neil Patrick Harris are very good as Robin and Nightwing. The oddest was John DiMaggio as The Joker; hearing Bender's voice come out of Joker's red, smiling mouth took some getting used to. Under The Red Hood's story contained a few too many similarities to the rather excellent Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, which also involved the Joker and a traumatized Robin, but even if it's sort of the same Bat-tale, Under the Red Hood is overall a fine Bat-time.

Salt

SALT

** SPOILERS **

Anyone who knows me has heard me lament how much I miss the Cold War. Not in real life so much, but at the movies. I grew up on a steady diet of James Bond foiling Russian plans to destroy the West, Rocky Balboa going 15 rounds with Ivan Drago in Moscow, and the Red October being hijacked by its defector captain with the Scottish accent Sean Connery. One of the great pleasures of Salt is that the Russians are back with a vengeance as The Bad Guys. What's more, instead of a suave British secret agent or even an American spy, the only person standing between evil Russians and worldwide Armageddon is a Russian-born double agent working for the CIA, Evelyn Salt, played by a totally gung ho Angelina Jolie.

Salt mines just about all the tried and true tropes of secret agent action movies. The story is utterly preposterous, unbelievable, and makes no rational sense, but apply secret agent action movie logic and it makes a tremendous amount of sense: We first meet Evelyn Salt as a POW in a North Korean gulag (no horrible Madonna music while she's tortured - that's one up Salt has on Mr. Bond). Salt insists over and over she's not a spy, but she is. She's rescued by the CIA via the efforts of her husband August Diehl, a German-born archanologist and the only man who loves her regardless of who or what she is. Salt's devotion to her husband is the reason behind virtually everything she does for the rest of the movie.

One day, an old Soviet spy walks into CIA headquarters with a wild knee-slapper of a story about Russian sleeper assassins trained from childhood to infiltrate the United States. (A backstory strikingly reminiscent of Project Manticore in James Cameron's TV series Dark Angel, only without the sci-fi elements that made Jessica Alba a transgenic super soldier.) One of these Russian assassins in particular was extra special - the daughter born to Russia's champion wrestler and its greatest chess player. This child had such exceptional parentage that she was stolen as a baby to be raised with a special mission: she would live in deep cover in the US and ultimately murder the President of Russia before triggering nuclear war. This assassin who will kill the Russian President is named Evelyn Salt.

So of course Salt runs. To do what? Clear her name? Save her husband? Stop the evil plan? Or actually kill the Russian President?  The audience must play a guessing game throughout Salt, trying to reason out what Salt is actually doing, who she is, and what she really wants. The sheer movie star charisma of Angelina Jolie and the empathy she creates holds the audience's favor towards Evelyn Salt, even in moments where she seems to be the bad guy she's accused of being, especially when she seemingly makes good on assassinating the Russian President and then reunites with Orlov and her childhood "family".  A minted A-list action heroine from her turns in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Mr. And Mrs. Smith, and Wanted, Jolie dives headlong into all the physicality Salt requires of her. She flashes her radiant smile at key moments, sometimes genuinely, but more often strategically before she strikes, be it with guns, grenades, her own fists, or a homemade rocket launcher.

Salt's absurdities would be maddening in lesser hands, but director Phillip Noyce and his filmmaking team deliver one blisteringly entertaining action sequence after another, putting Salt through the wringer as she outwits, outruns, and outfights all of the federal agents under the command of Mr. Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Salt's CIA boss Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber). Salt evades capture in Washington in a thrilling chase by vaulting herself off of freeway ramps from one semi-truck to another, but that's nothing compared to the gambit she pulls in New York City to "assassinate" the Russian President in a way no Secret Service protocol could ever anticipate. Salt even dips into Ethan Hunt's bag of tricks with prosthetic faces. Salt's execution of the real villain is one of the coolest kill scenes I've ever seen, with an incredible lingering shot of Jolie really performing the stunt. No matter what anyone tries, they just can't lick Salt.

The third act reveal of who else is a Russian double agent trying to murder the President and launch nukes at the Middle East (to piss them off and make them destroy America) is satisfying, but the final scenes between Salt and Mr. Peabody take the cake. Somehow, Ejiofor sells one of the screwiest Trademark Changes of Heart ever when he decides to believe that there are more Russian sleepers hiding out there and the only one who can stop them all is Evelyn Salt.  Salt doesn't even get a chance to thank Mr. Peabody for setting her free to kick ass in a sequel, but Mr. Peabody getting to be in such a sequel ought to be thanks enough.  One can't help but imagine Jason Bourne watching Salt and shaking his head aghast at the impossible scrapes Salt manages to overcome. Why, watching Salt, Bourne might even fall in love.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE

"From now on, I'm Switzerland, okay?!"

The Twilight Saga has introduced the world to sparkly emo vampires and chiseled Native American werewolves, but Eclipse, the third cinematic entry in the franchise, brings forth a creature the world truly may not have been ready for: a "good" Twilight movie. "Good" being a subjective term, of course. Perhaps "entertaining" may be a more apt compliment. Or simply, "not horrible" if we must be unkind. Regardless, compared to the two previous movies in The Twilight Saga, Catherine Hardwicke's blue-tinged eye roller Twilight and Chris Weitz's gold-tinged dreary dreck New Moon, David Slade's efficient, action-packed Eclipse is the belle of the ball. If one must watch a Twilight movie for whatever reason, Eclipse is the one to see.

Slade, the director of the vampire action-horror gorefest 30 Days of Night, reportedly made some unkind comments towards the Twilight franchise before agreeing to helm Eclipse. If so, it seems his outsider's perspective towards the material really helped the finished product. (Any disdain Slade may have for Twilight was perhaps most visible in the opening title "Eclipse", which was curiously not preceded by "The Twilight Saga".)  Overwrought teen drama between the three lead characters comes with the territory - it's the heart and soul, stock and trade of the Twilight Saga -  but Slade kept a surprisingly light touch in those many scenes, keeping them moving and staking an undercurrent of humor in even the sappiest moments instead of wallowing in it all to the point of misery like Chris Weitz did. (Bella breaking her hand punching Jacob in the face, and Jacob's explanation to Bella's father were comedic highlights.) Slade also ramped up the action to a satisfying degree, with a horde of vampire "Newborns" attacking the combined forces of the Cullen family and werewolves in Eclipse's climactic confrontations. Vampire on vampire violence, vampire on werewolf violence, dismemberments, decapitations, Slade successfully goes for broke when the carnage starts.

New Moon took the questionable position that Everybody Loves Bella (Kristen Stewart). In Eclipse, Bella Swan's choices have narrowed down to two, although in her mind, heart, and her secret womanly places no man or monster has yet plumbed the depths of, there's really only her one true love, the vampire Edward Cullen (Rob Pattinson). And yet, out there howling at the moon and peeing in the bushes, is her other suitor, the noble werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner). Jacob had long since narrowed the field of Bella boyfriend wanna bes, having cock blocked Bella's classmate who wanted to date her in one of the only amusing moments in New Moon. By Eclipse, it's just down to him and Edward for Bella's affections.

Eclipse is bookended with a couple of lovey-dovey rolling around in the sunlit grass scenes between Edward and Bella that would make Anakin and Amidala vomit, but these moments are a big step forward for everyone's favorite couple. Finally, they seem generally comfortable and happy around each other (or as happy as that sullen mope Bella seems to get), compared to how outright miserable they seemed in each others' presence in the previous films. Edward has chilled out, seriously. Gone are his wild mood swings and various guilt complexes. The remaining sources of stress in Edward's otherwise ideal eternal life are the vampires coming to kill Bella and Bella continually badgering him about turning her into a vampire. Edward's curious solution is to keep asking Bella to marry him, which Bella finally agrees to when Edward describes the old-timey way he'd propose if he were still alive and if it was still the 19th century.

High school graduation is coming. ("After all, how many times do we get to graduate high school?" is an in-joke at lunch only the Cullens and Bella get.) Bella's uncool classmates have made it to the cool Cullen table and get invited to the cool Cullen house parties via Bella, with Academy Award nominee Anna Kendrick as the valedictorian of their senior class. In her commencement address, Kendrick is just one of several characters who speechify directly and indirectly to Bella regarding her potential life choices. "Now is the time for us to make mistakes," Kendrick muses. You know, the kind of mistakes young people make that aren't permanent, that they can regret but learn and improve from.

Bella misses the point entirely, singularly focused on her obsession with becoming a vampire and never wavering from this madness, despite Edward's surprisingly rational and poor, lovelorn Jacob's multiple attempts to talk her out of it. The same conversation gets repeated over and over throughout Eclipse between the three; essentially: "Bella, don't become a vampire." "Nope, I'm gonna do it." Jacob has more than a few temper tantrums and scenes where he storms off from Bella stonewalling him. Finally, this culminates in the aforementioned second sunlit rolling around in the grass scene where Bella makes her final, resolute "I am woman, hear me state unequivocally I'm becoming a vampire" speech to Edward, preceded by her logic that she never felt she fit in anywhere in the world until she found solace and kindred spirits in the company of the sexy undead. The musical score cues soar to meet Bella's declaration with "rah rah" hilarity, as if the movie is telling the audience it agrees that this dumb girl's fierce determination to die and become a blood sucking monster is the best life choice she could make for herself.

The rivalry between Jacob and Edward is a source of endless humor. They just don't like each other, those two. (Edward does have a point about Jacob needing to put on a shirt.) Their constant shouting matches, insult trading (complete with digs at how bad each other smells), and nose-to-nose snarling stare downs makes one wonder if it's really the vampire and werewolf in love with each other and they're just passing Bella back and forth between them. Seriously, you two, just kiss already. Jacob and Edward finally reach a detente in a pitched tent (any subtext there?) when Jacob cuddles with a freezing Bella to keep her warm, which Edward takes great umbrage to initially. (This comes complete with Jacob's shameless line "After all, I am hotter than you.") But after some straight talk between vampire and werewolf, each monster sees that the other monster isn't such a bad guy after all.

In the end, Jacob and Edward are united in their desire to keep Bella safe from killer Newborn vampires, even though Bella ultimately chooses Edward, as she must. You can't blame Jacob for trying, though maybe you could point out that Jacob insists Bella is in love with him despite any real indication that this is so, besides her wide-eyed gasps whenever he takes his shirt off. Maybe it's the way she pets him in wolf form that has Jacob so convinced. I gotta say, Jacob's final plea to Bella, "You belong with me. It would be as easy as breathing" is where wolf boy blew it. Dude, you're 17. Girls don't want easy reliability at your age. They want a little danger. Jacob's a good boy, maybe too good a boy. But here's a perk: in wolf form, he can always lick his own balls.

All right, enough about those three. There's other stuff going on in Eclipse: The main villain from the whole Twilight Saga, the redheaded vampire Victoria (now played by Bryce Dallas Howard as more petulant than menacing) has been trying to kill Bella for three movies now. This time, she and her new loverboy vampire assemble an army of Newborns to attack the unsuspecting town of Forks. This causes great consternation among the Cullen family, who get to show a lot more personality and are rewarded with a lot more screen time in this movie, including some amusing flashbacks to how some of them became vampires. I liked the revelation that the blond Cullen who always had a rod up his ass is a strategic genius and has a Texan accent. Who knew? I also liked the female Cullen who always hated Bella and who isn't Ashley Greene's story of how she was turned vampire and that she basically became the Bloofer Lady from Bram Stoker's Dracula.

The Cullens and their usual mortal enemies, the Earthy pack of denim shorts-clad Never Nude Native American werewolves, form an alliance and train together to fight the Newborns; this is perhaps a curious tactical error for the vampires as they basically gave the wolves a download on all of their fighting techniques. Jacob also brings Bella to a werewolf bonfire pow wow, where their chief tells them the story of the first time the werewolves met a vampire and what sparked their war, complete with Foreshadowing from the story of how a Native American princess sacrificed her life that gives Bella the idea of how distract Victoria so Edward can kill her. (But not to the point of Bella sacrificing her life.)  The entertaining carnage that ensues between the Newborns, Cullens, and werewolves also draws the attention of everybody's favorite vampire dandy fops, the Volturi, lead by Dakota Fanning. The Volturi are a sore thumb in this movie, with their faux-Shakespearian dialogue delivered with all of the skill of a high school drama club.

That there will be two more movies made from the final, and from what I've been told by my lady friends, the least enjoyed and rather reviled book, "Breaking Dawn", casts a dark shadow on Eclipse. Frankly, Eclipse provided a perfectly fine cinematic ending for The Twilight Saga. It concluded all the main plot threads, including Bella's arch enemy Victoria literally beside herself before Edward burned her to ash, the vampires and werewolves getting along, and Bella choosing to marry Edward and become a bloodsucking, unholy creature of the night instead of being a normal, well-adjusted person. Seems like everything wrapped up nicely. But when there are so many dump trucks full of money to be made from Twilight, there's just no chance of going out of a high note, is there?  I guess if I'm curious about anything, it's how Bella's good guy father, Charlie the Sheriff, will take it when he finds out his daughter isn't just getting married, but will soon become a monster breathing men would kill. And just when he was starting to like Edward Cullen too.

Inception: The IMAX Experience

INCEPTION: THE IMAX EXPERIENCE

** SPOILERS **

Hollywood scuttlebutt is that Christopher Nolan spent ten years conceiving Inception. He began not long after The Matrix came out, I wager. With Inception, Nolan takes on the The Matrix at its own game, freed from the juvenile comic book and chop socky kung fu inspirations of the Wachowski Brothers. Nolan dreams his visually dazzling dreams strictly for grown ups. He concocts a mature and sophisticated but sometimes difficult adventure tome about guilt, love and redemption, using the blurred lines between reality and dreams as its proving ground.

Leonardo DiCaprio leads a stellar cast, some of whom are culled from Nolan's Batman Begins and The Dark Knight - Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, and Michael Caine. The newcomers to Nolan's company of players are DiCaprio as an Extractor of information within dreams. Working for a shadowy corporation, DiCaprio's shadowy job is to invade people's dreams and steal whatever shadowy secrets they're hiding. Jason Gordon-Levitt is his staunch ally, while Tom Hardy is a Forger, a shapeshifter within the dreams. Dileep Rao is the Chemist who induces people to dream. Ellen Page is the newest recruit, the Architect of dreams, able to create and manipulate the reality of a dreamer's dreamscape. How Page is able to do what she does is never explained, but how can you "explain" such awesome sights as an entire addrondissement of Paris inverting upon itself until it's upside down?

Watanabe, their target at the start of the movie, comes to them with a proposal: to plant an idea in the mind of Murphy, his business competitor. ("An idea," DiCaprio informs us," is the greatest virus known to man.") Watanabe wants this idea to be for Murphy to dismantle the business empire he stands to inherit from his dying father, Pete Postlethwaite, lest Murphy's company control 50% of the world's energy and become its own superpower. This would be very bad, Watanabe insists. This process of planting an idea into a dreamer's mind is called "inception".  They say it can't be done, but DiCaprio knows it can. He's done it before. It didn't go so well then, but he'll do it again quid pro quo if Watanabe uses his far-reaching, shadowy connections to allow DiCaprio - a fugitive ex-pat - to return to the US and his children.

With that set up, DiCaprio and his team go after Murphy to commit inception and to extract a secret in a high-tech vault buried deep within Murphy's subconsciousness. To accomplish this, they engage in an elaborate subterfuge to take Murphy not just within a dream, or a dream within a dream, but into a dream within a dream within a dream.  Three layers of dreams, from which they all must wake and survive attacks from Projections, depicted as assault teams from Murphy's mind trained to defend and protect him within the dreams.  There is also a dreaded fourth layer, Limbo, where a dreamer can be lost for decades. DiCaprio knows about Limbo all too well.

DiCaprio's work with Martin Scorsese (The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island) has enabled him to master portraying tortured characters suffering from deep emotional wounds, unsure of their own reality, desperately grasping at tenuous threads to maintain their sanity. In Inception, DiCaprio is haunted, literally in the dream worlds, by his wife Marion Cotillard. Page is the audience's link to understanding DiCaprio's gradual, emotional unraveling. Without Page asking questions, prodding him, and occasionally betraying his wishes within the dreams, we'd never understand why he can't bear to see his children's faces (an amazing device Nolan employs) and why Cotillard waits for DiCaprio in a shambles of a penthouse suite or in the kitchen of their home, chef's knife in hand.

Even more affecting to me than DiCaprio's torment over his wife and his inability in the real world to return to the United States and see his children without being arrested and imprisoned for his wife's death was Murphy's relationship with his father. Assuming the identity in dreams of Postlethwaite's consigliere Tom Berenger (Principal Skinner thinks Bart Simpson would love this movie; it has Tom Berenger), Hardy is the means for the audience to delve deep into Murphy's issues with Postlethwaite's "disappointment" with him as his son and heir. Murphy turns out to be the most sympathetic person in Inception; he is simply a son coping with his father's expectations and lack of affection, while struggling to be his own man.  Our "heroes" spend the entire movie kidnapping, manipulating, and emotionally mindfucking Murphy. Though he comes out of Inception with "inception", he also finds the personal strength to become the man his father knew he could be.

Nolan expects the audience to side with DiCaprio, Page, Gordon-Levitt, Hardy, Rao, and Watanabe (poor Ken spends half the movie slowly dying from a bullet hole in his chest) in their gambit against Murphy, but they are all actually scoundrels. They're likable and charming together; Hardy is a terrific commando and I liked Gordon-Levitt's flirtation with Page and his tricking her into kissing him. To be clear, they're all the real bad guys here. They willingly and purposely invade an innocent man's dreams under questionable circumstances (would it really be so bad if Murphy, who seems like a good man, controlled half the world's energy supply?) and nearly get him and themselves killed.

It's very easy to become lost in the maze of Nolan's dreamscape. His ambitions sometimes extend his reach, especially in the chaotic and action-packed dream within a dream within a dream sequences that comprise the second half of Inception. Nolan does maintain a visual clarity for each dream level: the first, rainy Los Angeles, the second, a luxury hotel, and the third, snowy mountains with a forbidding fortress. Inception's fascinating first half involves DiCaprio and Gordon-Levitt explaining the rules of manipulating the dreamworlds to the inquisitive Page, but when the action kicks in, Nolan keeps it purposefully relentless, perhaps necessarily, so that there's no time for the audience to question the logic or reality of what they're seeing. When Nolan pauses the action and spectacle, his dialogue repeats in rhythms, but he also tends to have his characters over-explain their motivations and actions.

Inception's spectacle is truly awe-inspiring. Even when not in the dream world, Nolan shoots all around the world in Paris, Kyoto, and Los Angeles, using the scope of IMAX to present their real life city scapes in breathtaking fashion. Within dreams, Nolan masterfully uses CGI to create wonders like DiCaprio's personal dream world of decaying skyscrapers cliffside on a breaking beach, and stairwells that become a never-ending maze. Inception also presents us with the longest slow motion van-drives-off-a-bride-and-falls-into-the-water sequence in the history of film.

Nolan's homages to his favorite films are fun to spot. He once again milks his love for Michael Mann's Heat, staging his own version of the famous machine gun shootout on the streets of Los Angeles, this time with rain machines pounding the actors.  An assault on a snowy mountaintop fortress complete with snowmobiles, machine gun ski chases, and an avalanche seems to be Nolan's tribute to James Bond and On Her Majesty's Secret Service.  Gordon-Levitt has the best action scene in the whole shebang: a spectacular, physics-defying fight with Projections in a hotel hallway  that's jaw-droppingly convincing. (It ends, in a sly nod to WWE, with Gordon-Levitt applying the Million Dollar Dream sleeperhold!) When Murphy sees his dying father one last time in the dream within the dream within the dream, Postlethwaithe's room looks suspiciously like a holodeck on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Inception's ending leaves us with a dangling question, all determined by whether or not DiCaprio's dream "totem" continued spinning forever or whether it stopped and toppled. Nolan leaves us in mid-spin, implying that DiCaprio never left Limbo and gained his heart's desire there.  I'd like to hope that the totem eventually stopped spinning, that DiCaprio really did return to reality and his children, but I believe Watanabe made good on his promise to DiCaprio in Limbo. The sudden appearance of Michael Caine waiting for DiCaprio at LAX indicates that DiCaprio never woke up from the dream and remains trapped in Limbo. For DiCaprio, the ending of "it was all just a dream" is exactly the kick he was always searching for.