Inception-In which Cillian Murphy has a bag over his head, once again.

So I finally got around to seeing Inception yesterday, and let me say that it truly exceeded my expectations as a thriller and ultimately, a mindfuck.  Within the first 9 minutes, you are thrown into a crazy world in which you have no idea what's going on, and things aren't being explained.  You just have to observe (and drool over Joseph Gordon Levitt) and hope that everything illuminates itself accordingly.  It's basically your traditional heist movie (drugs, robbery, that sort of thing) but much more interesting and complex.  It's thought robbery, or more specifically, thought placement.

More important, there's no bond girls here, which is a major plus, for ladies watching it, and no gratuitous violence.  This is a cerebral action movie.  There's lots of anonymous shooting, but very limited blood and gore, and the deaths are of dream projections, not real people.  

As a side note, I am absolutely fascinated by Leonardo DiCaprio's transformation, as an actor and a person, from a scrawny teen heart throb to a round faced, goatee donning suspense/thriller actor of high quality.  Who knew?  I can never get enough of Joseph Gordon Levitt, so that was a major plus, and I love Ellen Page and her sassy, smart characters, not to mention Cillian Murphy, who seems to always have a bag over his head in Nolan's movies.  WIthout giving much of the plot away, the movie was definitely male dominated, and Page's character wasn't a particularly violent one, but she was the architect of the realities that the characters occupied, and in control of much of the action.  She was an emotional sensor, and was able to understand DiCaprio in ways that his coworkers couldn't, and helped him to deal with the death of his wife (Played by a fierce Marion Cotillard).  

This is an awesome movie when it comes to drama, suspense, and simply not knowing what the heck is happening, and it made me happy to see the leading ladies (Marion Cotillard including) in non-Bond girl style approaches.  While I give props to Angelina Jolie for consistently kicking ass in action movies everywhere (usually scantily clad, as well), I appreciate the depth and contemplativeness of these two female characters, and the lack of dumb sex scenes and excess cleavage.  Both of these actresses are beautiful, in a slightly untraditional way, and this film allowed them to be so without compromising the integrity or intensity of the plot.  I suppose it is the first action movie I've seen in which there is no dumb Romance element to it?  Way to go, Christopher Nolan.

  

Not to mention the perception of reality, and questioning the perception of perception.  That's deep right stuff for an action movie.  Either way, I definitely want to see it again, and not just for Gordon-Levitt.