First, let me say that the acting was good, and that Leonardo DiCaprio is a good actor. The bad rating I gave this movie has nothing to do with the actors' performances.

I gave this a bad rating because the writing was just bad. The CONCEPT of the movie was excellent. When I first saw the trailer, my imagination went wild. The scope of where you could go and what you could do with a concept like inception in people's dreams is almost endless.

But, where did they run with it? Guns? Explosions? Grand Theft Auto? Matrix wannabe? These are the words that came to mind when I watched this.

And the plot, if that's what you call it, is nothing. It's convoluted minus the imagination, mystery, and intelligence. It's like they made it complicated so it could SEEM intelligent. But trust me, it's not! About 1/2 to 2/3 into the movie, the ending became VERY predictable. Even so, I thought, "It's about the journey not the ending. Right?" Except the journey sucked. How come everybody in this movie only dreams about automatic weapons? I know, I know. There are a bunch of explanations in the movie, but the explanations are terrible and not thorough enough to be believable. For example, the characters explain the assault weapons in the dreams by saying the subconscious had been militarized.

What kind of stupid explanation is that? Am I supposed to take that seriously? It seems like the movie is just asking for an excuse to become a pseudo-Matrix action flick. Except the Matrix was much better than this.

Well... What a waste of a good concept... but mindless action flicks can be fun, even when they continuously, pretentiously claim to be thought-provoking..... But then there's the looooong drawn out mushy ending that breaks up the action and isn't befitting an action flick at all.

So, congratulations Hollywood. You managed to take a good concept of a movie with a great cast, remove all imagination and intelligence, while simultaneously turning it into a mediocre action flick with a terrible ending.

Hollywood fails again... 4/10 stars