Inception

Rated: PG-13

In Theaters!

Dominic "Dom" Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) washes up on a beach, where he is detained by armed guards and brought in front of an old man. The guards present the old man with two items they found on Cobb: a handgun and a small metal toy top. He recognizes the top and Cobb, saying that he knows him from a "half-remembered dream". Puzzled by the top's appearance, he gives it a spin on the table. In an abrupt scene change, Cobb and Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) appear in front of powerful businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe), proposing to teach his subconscious defense against other extractors, though this is secretly a front for their mission: extracting a secret document from Saito's mind. Cobb steals the secret document, but discovers that the mysterious Mal (Marion Cotillard) has informed Saito that the dream is a set-up and he has subsequently redacted vital information from it. The dream collapses, and they awaken in Saito's secret hideout. Saito realizes he is still dreaming when he feels that the floor rug is rendered from the wrong material. The team abort the mission and wake up on a train and disperse, leaving Saito. Saito tracks down Cobb and Arthur and explains that the extraction was an audition, requesting their services to perform inception—secretly implanting an idea in the mind. Their target is Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), son of Saito's terminally ill corporate rival Maurice Fischer (Pete Postlethwaite). The objective is to plant the idea in Robert's mind to dismantle his father's business empire, thus preventing it from becoming a global energy monopoly and running Saito out of business. Arthur claims inception is impossible. Cobb disagrees, saying that he has performed it once before. However, he warns Saito that inception cannot control the growth of the idea and that it could potentially fundamentally change Robert from that point onward, causing him to become obsessed by the thought. Needing to replace Nash (Lukas Haas), the team "architect" who compromised their last assignment, Cobb visits his father-in-law and mentor Miles (Michael Caine) in Paris, who introduces him to one of his best students, Ariadne (Ellen Page). Ariadne is an innately skilled "architect" and agrees to join the team. The remaining members include Eames (Tom Hardy), a "forger" who shifts identities inside dreams, and Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a chemist who concocts the sedatives necessary for several layers of dreams. To prepare, Ariadne learns the basics of extraction, including each member's use of a personal item, called a "totem", that allows them to maintain awareness in dreams and discern between reality and dreaming. The item must have a unique physical property that only the user will know, so that it cannot be replicated in another person's dream. Arthur uses a loaded die, while Cobb uses a metal top. Ariadne, suspicious of Cobb after encountering an apparition of the saboteur Mal, follows him into his dreams where she finds he has built a realm entirely out of regretted memories. Cobb reveals that he and Mal were married and explored shared dreams together, building an entire city while stuck in the deepest edges of the subconscious ("limbo") for what they perceived to be fifty years. Upon exiting the dream, Mal became convinced that she was still dreaming, and killed herself to "wake up". She tried to coerce Cobb to follow her by framing him for her death. He explains to Ariadne that the metal top he uses used to be Mal's and would spin continuously without falling when used in dreams. Using it and seeing it eventually topple over is how he knows he is in the waking world. The saboteur Mal who appeared before is actually Cobb's subconscious projection of Mal, and she is aware of anything he knows. Because this projection of Mal would implicitly know how to disrupt his missions, Cobb—although highly skilled in dream architecture—refuses to be the team architect. In return for a successfully completed mission, Cobb has Saito promise to use his influence to clear Cobb's charges for murder, allowing him to return to the USA and to his and Mal's two young children. In order for the idea to be successfully implanted, Eames devises a plan for inception based on Robert's complex relationship with his father. Crucially, the idea must seem like an original thought to the subject, not an external suggestion. If not done carefully and subtly, the idea can be rejected and the mission will be a waste. The plan requires the complex use of several layers of nested dreams, corresponding to deeper levels of Robert's subconscious. Since Cobb has kept the true danger of Mal's presence a secret from the rest of the team, Ariadne resolves to join the mission to serve as a watchful eye. When Maurice dies, the team joins Robert on a 10-hour trans-Pacific flight, drugging him and making him the subject of a shared dream. Yusuf is the host of the first dream, a rainy cityscape. Whilst abducting Robert, the team is surprised to find that they are attacked by mercenary forces, and Saito is seriously injured. Cobb is angry that Arthur’s research failed to note that that Robert had received prior training to prevent extractors from breaking into his mind, thus having a militarized subconscious that will seek out "invaders" and destroy them. The team wants to abort, but Cobb belatedly discloses that because of the strong sedative required to build stable dreams within dreams, dying within the dream won't awaken them, but instead will condemn them to a state of "limbo" where they will be unable to establish the difference between dreams and reality and may face insanity, Cobb having experienced it firsthand. To begin the inception, Eames assumes the identity of Peter Browning (Tom Berenger), Robert's godfather. He claims that Maurice had a safe in his office that contained a will to break up his business empire. After Robert insists he doesn’t know the safe combination, instead providing the first six numbers that come to his head, the team board a van, taking Robert and "Browning" with them, to escape the mercenaries. They enter the second dream, set in a posh hotel hosted by Arthur. Yusuf remains in the first dream, driving evasively to protect them from the mercenaries. Realizing that time is short and that if Saito "dies", he will be unable to remember their agreement, Cobb decides to use a risky strategy, called "Mr. Charles". The strategy involves telling Robert that he is dreaming, manipulating him into believing that the team are the subconscious projections designed by his training to protect him and that his true projections are invading extractors, allowing the team easier access to his mind. Earning Robert's trust, they persuade him into believing that the kidnapping in the first dream was real and orchestrated by Browning to discover the safe code and destroy the contents. They convince him to perform an extraction on "Browning" to find the true contents of the safe, though actually they are entering deeper into Robert's subconscious. Arthur remains in the hotel dream to protect them from additional mercenaries. The third dream, hosted by Eames, is in a snowbound fortress. The rest of the plan requires that Robert reach the vault in the center of the fortress and enter the code, discovering the planted idea. Once the inception is successful, they must exit the dream sequences. The team's exit strategy depends upon the use of a "kick", a sensation of falling or a sharp jolt to startle the person awake from a deeper level of dreaming. To return to reality, they must stage a series of concurrent kicks, timed precisely to awaken them. The heavy sedation requires a kick from both the nested level of dreaming and the levels above it. The first dream's kick is to come when Yusuf drives his van off a bridge, but he is forced to execute it early, and since the kick is not synchronized with the rest, the team is not woken, though the eventual crash into the water below will serve as a back-up kick. As the van falls from the bridge, the hotel experiences zero gravity since the host, Arthur, is only one dream down. Unable to simulate a sensation of falling due to the lack of gravity, Arthur improvises and propels an elevator containing the team up to the roof with explosives. The third dream's kick will come from Eames detonating explosives around the fortress. In the third dream, Robert pairs with Saito, whose injuries from the first dream are worsening, and they enter the compound to find the vault containing the safe while Cobb and Ariadne take a sniping position to protect them, with Eames distracting Robert's subconscious projections. The team is overwhelmed by the subconscious projections and requires a new route to the vault, and Ariadne is forced to tell Cobb the architectural designs of the dream, despite the possibility of Mal using them to sabotage the mission. Robert and Saito arrive at the vault, but Saito finally "dies" from his injury and is lost in limbo. Mal infiltrates the fortress and kills Robert before he can enter the vault, knowing that Cobb will try to retrieve him from limbo, where she dwells. Cobb kills the projection of Mal, removing her from the third dream. With the inception plan depending on Robert opening the vault, Ariadne proposes retrieving him from limbo by entering a fourth dream. Though he knows Mal will be waiting for him, Cobb agrees and the two enter a fourth dream, while Eames remains behind to protect them. The fourth dream is Cobb's version of limbo, the now-decaying city he created with Mal. When they find and confront Mal, Cobb reveals to Ariadne why he knows that inception is possible: When they were stuck in limbo for fifty years, Mal had refused to leave the dream world and convinced herself that it was real. To motivate her to wake up, Cobb planted the idea in her mind that her life was a dream. However, Cobb found that the idea could not be controlled, revealing the danger of inception. The idea grew too powerful, and after waking up, Mal became obsessed with the idea that her life was still a dream and that she was still asleep, leading to her suicide. Therefore, Cobb's projection of Mal sabotages him because it is a manifestation of the guilt he feels about her death. Cobb finally accepts that Mal is dead and that any projection of her within the dreams will not replace her. Meanwhile, Ariadne locates Robert and throws him from the balcony. This improvised kick and the use of a defibrillator by Eames brings Robert back to "life" in the fortress. He opens the vault, where he finds a subconscious projection of Maurice on his deathbed. Maurice says that he is disappointed not by the fact that his son couldn't follow in his footsteps, but that he even tried. In addition to the will, the safe contains a paper pinwheel from his childhood, allowing Robert to find emotional catharsis, and he resolves to break up the empire, striving to succeed as a man in his own right, as he believes his father wanted, thus successfully completing the inception. In limbo, Ariadne attempts to convince Cobb to escape with her. However, having dealt with his guilt over Mal, Cobb says he will stay to retrieve Saito. Ariadne understands and jumps off the balcony, and Eames' explosives collapse the tower, bringing her into the third dream and syncing up with the kicks in the shallower dreams. As the elevator smashes into the roof, she briefly awakens inside the elevator chamber. They have missed the first kick into Yusuf's dream with the van falling from the bridge but catch the back-up one as it hits the water below, awakening in the back seats. The timer mechanism on the trans-Pacific flight brings her back to reality once the sedative wears off. The first scene in which Cobb is washed ashore is repeated. Saito is revealed to be the old man, aged due to the exponential nature of time in successively deeper dreams and has lived an entire life not knowing that he was dreaming. Saito remembers Cobb and reaches for the handgun as the top is still shown ceaselessly spinning. Cobb awakens on the plane to find everyone well, including Saito, who honors his agreement. He places a call and Cobb successfully clears immigration and customs into the USA as the rest of the team go their separate ways. He finally returns home and spins his totem spinning top on the table, but is distracted by his children playing outside. The top keeps spinning and starts to wobble slightly as the film ends, leaving the question of whether Cobb is still dreaming unresolved.