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"Warning: This article contains mild spoilers that some readers may prefer to avoid.  Not long ago we emerged from a screening of Inception, Christopher Nolan&amp;#039;s eagerly-awaited heist thriller follow-up to The Dark Knight. We&amp;#039;ll have a full review up very soon, but in the meantime we&amp;#039;ve tapped out a mini-review based on our initial thoughts of the labyrinthine flick. In short, it&amp;#039;s outstanding, a mainstream Hollywood science fiction film on a level with Blade Runner and the first Matrix. The set-up is fairly straightforward: Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) works on the black market infiltrating dreams and extracting valuable information from his marks on a subconscious level. He&amp;#039;s hired by tycoon Saito (Ken Watanabe) to plant an idea into business rival Fischer&amp;#039;s (Cillian Murphy) mind as the catalyst for corporate sabotage. Saito makes it clear to Cobb - who&amp;#039;s wanted by US authorities - that if he completes the assignment he&amp;#039;ll fix things so that he can make it through immigration and go home. Like much of Nolan&amp;#039;s work, the story is a dense and complex puzzle and this narrative trickery leads to plenty of surprises - it&amp;#039;s impossible to predict where Inception is going and these gear-shifts are part of its brilliance. It powers through the two hours-plus running time at breakneck speed, sending the heist team - including Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page and the excellent Tom Hardy - plunging deep into the mind of Fischer. There are multiple levels of reality, dreams-within-dreams (that metal spinner, by the way, has major significance), but the sci-tech aspects are used to facilitate the story instead of dictate it. The action sequences range from the epic (snowmobile chases straight out of Bond) to the wildly inventive (Gordon-Levitt navigating rotating corridors), while DiCaprio strikes emotional chords in scenes with his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) and the son and daughter he&amp;#039;s been separated from. When it&amp;#039;s all over, you&amp;#039;ll want to walk straight back into the cinemas and see it again to unravel it completely. Inception embraces ambiguity and doesn&amp;#039;t neatly tie up loose ends. Our verdict? It&amp;#039;s challenging, whip-smart, thrilling and unmissable.  Leave your comments on Inception in the space below! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/news/a239821/first-take-inception/>