The director puts his wildly overqualified cast in sharp suits, gives them sharper attitudes and then stages some extraordinary visual spectacle and action.
A thriller ​‘set within the architecture of the mind’ was all that Nolan told anyone about Inception before release, and it’s testament to his filmmaking that we felt like we understood that phrase by the time the credits rolled. Leonardo DiCaprio leads the team pulling a heist, but it’s a job achieved through brain infiltration and subconscious manipulation. The result includes some of the most surreal and beautiful images of any modern blockbuster and a killer score from regular Nolan collaborator Hans Zimmer. The director puts his wildly overqualified cast in sharp suits, gives them sharper attitudes and then stages some extraordinary visual spectacle and action. Yet in the end, it’s the love and loss, rather than the dazzle, that he emphasises.