The Black Campbell

Dehah’s fantastic infographic of the Inception plotline, just in case you forgot who’s dream was whose….

Okay — went to see Inception today since it looked like the kind of flick that works best on the big screen.  So the review:  it’s good.  Really bloody good.

The world it paints is ambiguous enough to disguise that it’s cyberpunk-style science-fiction, a heist movie wrapped in near future sci-fi where the protagonists are able to jacking into other people’s subconsciousnesses while they are sleeping.  The movie’s internal logic holds and they don’t play with the technology outside the basic premise — you can ride along in someone’s dreams, you can manipulate what they are doing to get to information they are trying to hide or to explore/alter their dream state.

The lead character, Cobb, is a troubled fellow (we find out why later — essentially he got trapped in a dream state where the perceived timespan was decades; it — and another important plot element — have left him a bit loopy, and on the run from the United States, where his children are) but he is a top “extractor” — a man who pulls information from people’s minds.  He gets hired by a Japanese corporate type with a faint smell of yakuza (although this is never mentioned…maybe I’m just projecting a bit of the ol’ WG onto the flick) to break into the mind of an heir to a major energy corporation to get him to do the unthinkable:  break up his father’s near monopolistic hold on energy.

To plant an idea in a person’s mind is extremely difficult, as they can always track the source of the meme; they call it “inception”.  Cobb is promised by the Saito — Ken Watanabe being awesome — that he will fix it so the charges keeping Cobb out of the US are dropped.  Cobb jumps at the chance and puts together a crack team to intercept Fischer (Cilian Murphy…good as always!) and break into his mind to plant this idea of breaking up his inheritance.

After this point, the action ramps up and the movie starts throwing fantastic effects sequences, interspersed with actual stunts (real stunt work always punches up CGI, I think; without a grounding in the real world — in sets, stunts, etc. — CGI starts working against the verisimilitude the more it is abused), and damned good action sequences that really take advantage of the “mental landscapes” the characters are in.  There a slight Philip K Dick suggestion at the end that is no surprise in coming, but it’s almost necessary to put the button on the movie.

The acting is quite good — from Leo DeCaprio’s Cobb and Cillian Murphy’s Fischer, to Marion Coutillard as Cobb’s ex.  The show, for me, was stolen — and this seems to be the case whenever I see him in things — by Tom Hardy (loved him in Rock n Rolla).  Ellen Page I tend to find one-note in her performances, but she’s workable in this.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt is well cast and does a good job as Cobb’s number two.

The visuals are stunning, and the wire work and combination of set design for actual stunt work really makes the movie pop.  The CGI looks great, but that’s because they use it to enhance, not to do the heavy lifting in the scenes.  It’s well written, and at about two and a half hours only about 5-10 minutes too long.  Not enough to not enjoy, just enough to notice it’s time to wrap it up.

The sound mixing is the usual overly loud music and sound effects, but I could understand what the actors were saying…so plus there.

Style: 5 out of 5 with a bullet.  Substance: 5 out of 5.  It’s a damn good movie.  Worth the full price, not just matinée.

This is a problem I’ve been wrestling with from about 2000 on — not hearing loss; my hearing’s as acute as ever — it’s the crappy mixing of sound that movie makers are giving us.  Foley guys are getting very creative with the digital sound effects, and yes, they’re cool — but let’s face it, you don’t hear people’s eyelashes swooshing through the air…not even Lady Gaga’s.  And the sound mixers — not only are the special effects too bloody loud, so is the incidental music.  It doesn’t get my blood flowing when there’s a rousing overture played at 200 decibels…it works better if you’re not bleeding from the ears.

Also, what is with male actors and not enunciating? Speak the hell up, guys! Important dialog should not be something you need to wait for the DVD release and close captioning to catch.  It was shit when Brando did it, it’s shit when all the trendy actors do it.  Part of acting?  Getting the lines across.  It’s not mysterious or brooding; it’s f#@$ing annoying.  You don’t have to backbench it like Patrick McGoohan used to (hey, Pat…the mike is three feet over your head; dial it back to five [or is that Six?]…), but don’t assume we’ve all got bat-like hearing, Christian Bale.

It’s particularly bad in the summertime, when I’ve got the swamp cooler and fan going to keep my desert-placed house down to a reasonable temperature; the white noise of the fan is usually right at the frequency of the average male voice.  The crappy sound mixing doesn’t help matters.

Den of Geek is complaining about the same thing.