As much as I liked this movie's last half, there were things about it as it was going along that I thought were downright awful.
I think if I had stopped watching it mid-way (before the "last job") I might have been like "meh- I can do without it".
The dialogue was sometimes atrocious, and it's a good thing that Leo gives us all of his acting skill to make some things roll right on by.
The whole "I've done inception before" felt extremely obvious to me (I'm trying not to spoil a major plot point).
Also, the whole "This is the last job, then I'll go back to my family" thing seemed almost like a joke. And then there was the showing the end at the beginning, which I don't think helped the story at all.
And could we PLEASE tell someone that Saito's accent was too strong to be understood?
AAaand- why wasn't it more "dreamy"? The hotel was just a hotel, the fortress was just a fortress, and nobody did anything DREAMY- that was just not interesting to me. I expected the girl to at least manipulate the world they were in at the end, considering she showed how she could do it before. All of the layered dream worlds were just like reality. Boring!
NOW THEN- All that being said, the last half was SOOOOOO frakkin' amazing, that I forgave all of that!
It was a classic "Uh-oh, things are going wrong already" with the plan, and they had to do some cool stuff to make it work anyway. Very cool. The layering of the dream worlds was inspired. The fight in the hallway was absolutely AMAAAAAAZING, and probably worth admission and the time for the rest of the movie.
The whole idea of The guy (the "target") having been trained to resist attack in his mind by other agents was great, and frankly the only reason for the action. Very smart. I can imagine the discussion in the board room:
"It's about invading people's dreams"
"How do we get GUNS in it?"
"Um... we don't... wouldn't make much sense"
"Well then forget it."
"No- wait! We can get the SUBCONSCIOUS to fight back... with GUNS!"
"Ok- you sold me!"
The writing of the story (for the second half), and the direction was absolutely incredible, considering the complexity of the story.
I cannot imagine how someone would leave the theatre not enjoying this film. I really hope it does well, and the word of mouth is pretty damn good, so it looks like it will.
