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My reception of "Inception"

We saw "Inception" at our local Imax because I just had to see for myself what all the shouting is about...

Dream a little dream: Leo DiCaprio plays a master of subconscious espionage, protecting or accessing the secrets of a person's mind during a chemically engineered shared dream state.

While Leo's guy is deft at extracting hidden knowledge, he gets a chance to set his life straight by fulfilling an extremely difficult assignment - complete the implantation or "inception" of an idea.

The run down: It's really hard to find comparisons between the new cinematic vision of Christopher Nolan and something you've already seen. The best I can manage would be some combination of "Mission: Impossible" and "The Matrix Reloaded" and even that misses the mark a bit.

"Inception" is probably one of the better films you'll see this summer, and offers a unique undertaking in the baseline story, visuals and objectives. But while the underpinnings of the storyline excel in originality, they sometimes stumble in their execution.

Once you reach the height of excitement, some of the story becomes a little muddled - not hard to follow, but not executed as cleanly as possible. And I hate to say that much of what happens toward the end is predictable if not unoriginal.

And while it's nice to see DiCaprio in something other than a Scorsese film, I just wasn't 100% behind his performance. He lacks the overall intensity of the marginal "Shutter Island" and the believability of the excellent "The Departed." This is not his best performance to date by far.

Of course, a big hook for "Inception" is the special effects. The CG is solid, but you don't get too many visuals you haven't seen elsewhere. While the action is mostly in dream sequences, the surrealist feeling of "The Matrix" is dropped in favor of a plot-padding alternative vision.

So this brings us to the bigger question - Do I need to see this in Imax? If you want to splurge, I say go for it. Bigger is better with this one, but a nice standard-screen showing in digital will be equally as entertaining.

Bottom line: "Inception" is good, but it isn't great. It draws you in and holds you in place, but it does trip on itself just a bit. Worth the price of admission and a good summer-time romp. However, don't expect to have the cinematic world turned upside down or the genre revolutionized.

Grade: B+

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