American cinema continues its discovery of philosophy. The Matrix translated Plato to the screen, Inception does it with Descartes. While you are having a vivid dream, you cannot tell you are dreaming. Unless you are organizing an inception- getting into people's dreams to steal a secret. Usually it would be done for unsavory purposes, but here's it's done for good- I guess. DiCaprio's character aims to implant an idea, rather than steal one, in a young well-to-do man who just inherited an empire. And this is good because monopolies are bad and the fellow who benefits from this is a competitor of the young man. DiCaprio gets out of this a clean record with the US government to enter the country and see his children. How a Japanese businessman can take care of such an issue with a simple phone call is just one of the things the viewer better not worry about in this film.

Comparisons with The Matrix are in order here as there are some structural similarities- metaphysical puzzles, high-octane action, but The Matrix is by far the superior film. Inception begins with a scene taking place in archaic Japan to introduce us to the characters. But that beginning didn't work for me at all. Neither did the ending- a ludicrous shoot-out scene somewhere on snow-covered mountains. While The Matrix thoroughly explains itself, Inception deals with the puzzles of internal logic that arise by...ignoring them. While the action in The Matrix is cutting-edge, spectacular even by today's standards and still influences movies today (like Inception and the bullet-avoiding Agent Smith copy of a villain in the awful Resident Evil IV), the action in Inception is lame. There are are two neat visual elements here, the city folding upon itself, and the gravity-defying hotel room scene and fight- again the fight is reminiscent of the final battle in Matrix III.

A dreadful side story involves the personal life of DiCaprio's character- and he's pretty much the only one about whom we find out anything in this movie. Everyone else doesn't matter-unfortunately. Because far more interesting and mysterious is the character of DiCaprio's sidekick Arthur. What's his deal? What is he about? We're never told. Instead we are treated repeatedly to DiCaprio's ex who starts out as a seriously odious villain who ruined the movie every time she showed up but then becomes more of a victim and still ruined the movie.

Oddly enough there aren't a lot of ideas be gained from this movie. The on intriguing idea was that wealthy people could be protecting their subconscious with some training to avoid revealing corporate secrets. And the entire hotel scene really carries this movie. It's delightfully tense and exciting. That excitement is in part accomplished with a genius soundtrack consisting of nothing but the same low trumpet note played over and over again.

The performances are good, except for Watanabe. I couldn't understand a word he said, his lines should have been re-recorded by someone else. On the other hand we have Ellen Page who gets a thankless role as "the architect" (The Matrix had one, too). She just gets to hang around with the other guys as the go on their adventures. But can this girl ever act! And she is absolutely gorgeous. She acts the hell out of every word she says, endowing the most trite lines with such meaning and depth that she had me hanging on her every syllable. What a performance that she gives with a near meaningless role.

Inception is a solid, above-average thriller with too many faults to make it exceptional: pathetically poor character development, sorry action scenes, annoying romance issues. The only exceptional part of Inception is Ellen Page's performance.