
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard, Tom Berenger, Dileep Rao, Pete Postlethwaite, Lukas Haas, Earl Cameron
OUR RATING: ★★★★★
Story:
Sci-fi action thriller written and directed by Christopher Nolan. The story follows thief Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), who has the rare ability to enter people’s dreams and steal their secrets from their subconscious. His skill has made him a hot commodity in the world of corporate espionage, but has also cost him everything he loves. Cobb gets a chance at redemption when he is offered a seemingly impossible task, plant an idea in someone’s mind. If he succeeds, it will be the perfect crime, but a dangerous enemy anticipates Cobb’s every move.
Our Favorite Quotes:
‘Once an idea has taken hold of the brain, it's almost impossible to eradicate.' - Dom Cobb (Inception) Click To Tweet ‘True inspiration is impossible to fake.' - Arthur (Inception) Click To Tweet ‘You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.' – Eames (Inception) Click To Tweet
Best Quotes
[an old looking Saito is sitting opposite Cobb]
Saito: Are you here to kill me? I know what this is.
[he picks up a small object from the table]
Saito: I’ve seen one before many, many years ago. It belonged to a man I met in a half-remembered dream. A man possessed of some radical notions.
Dom Cobb: What is the most resilient parasite? A bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm?
Arthur: What Mr. Cobb is trying to…
Dom Cobb: An idea. Resilient, highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain, it’s almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed, fully understood. That sticks, right in there somewhere.
[he points to his head]
Saito: For someone like you to steel?
Arthur: Yes, in dream state your conscious defenses are lowered and it makes your thoughts vulnerable to theft. It’s called extraction.
Dom Cobb: [to Saito] I know how to search your mind and find your secrets. I know the tricks and I could teach them to you so that even when you’re asleep your defense is never down. Look if you want my help, you’re going to have to be completely open with me. I need to know my way around your thoughts better than your wife, better than your therapist, better than anyone. This is a dream and you have a safe full of secrets and I need to know what’s in that safe. In order for this all to work, you need to completely let me in.
Mal: [to Cobb] If I jump would I survive?
Dom Cobb: Mal, what are you doing here?
Mal: I thought you might be missing me.
Dom Cobb: You know that I am. I can’t trust you anymore.
Mal: Tell me, do the children miss me?
Dom Cobb: I can’t imagine.
[Arthur wakes up from his dream after he gets shot by Cobb]
Nash: What are you doing? It’s too soon!
Arthur: I know. The dream is collapsing.
Arthur: This isn’t going to work. Wake him up.
[Nash goes to Cobb, tries to wake him up]
Nash: He won’t wake!
Arthur: Give him a kick. Unplug him.
Saito: You got what you came for.
Dom Cobb: Well, that’s not true. You left out a key piece of information, didn’t you? You held something back because you knew what we were up to. Question is, why did you let us in at all?
Saito: An audition.
Dom Cobb: An audition for what?
Saito: Doesn’t matter. You failed.
Dom Cobb: We extracted every bit of information you had in there.
Saito: But your deception was obvious.
Dom Cobb: You don’t seem to understand, Mr. Saito. The corporation that hired us, they won’t accept failure. We won’t last two days.
Arthur: Cobb.
[indicating to Cobb to speed things up]
Dom Cobb: Looks like I’m going to have to do this a little more simply.
[throws Saito onto the floor and hold a gun to his head]
Dom Cobb: Tell us what you know?! Tell us what you know now?!
[Saito laughs]
Saito: I’ve always hated this carpet.
[runs his fingers through the carpet]
Saito: It’s stained and frayed in such distinctive ways, but it’s very definitely made out of wool. And now, now it’s polyester. Which means that I’m not lying on my carpet in my apartment. You have lived up to your reputation, Mr. Cobb, I’m still dreaming.
Saito: Dream within a dream, ha? I’m impressed. But in my dream you play by my rules.
Dom Cobb: Ahn yes. But you, see Mr. Saito, it’s not your dream.
Nash: We’re in mine.
Arthur: A**hole! How did you mess up the carpet?
Nash: It wasn’t my fault.
Arthur: You’re the architect!
Nash: I didn’t know he was going to rub his damn cheek on it!
Dom Cobb: I have it under control.
Arthur: I’d hate to see you out of control.
[Cobb’s on the phone talking to his children]
James: When are you coming home dad?
Dom Cobb: Well, I can’t sweetheart. I can’t. Not for a while, remember?
James: Why?
Dom Cobb: I told you. I’m away because I’m working. Right?
Phillipa: Grandma says you’re never coming back.
Dom Cobb: Phillipa, is that you? Well, put grandma on the phone for me will you?
Phillipa: She’s shaking her head.
Dom Cobb: Well, let’s just hope she’s wrong about that.
Arthur: Hey, are you okay?
Dom Cobb: Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. Why?
Arthur: Well, down at the dream, Mal showing up
Dom Cobb: Come on. I’m sorry about your leg. It won’t happen again.
Arthur: It’s getting worse isn’t it?
Dom Cobb: One apology is all you’re getting. Alright, Arthur?
[referring to Nash]
Saito: He sold you out. Failed the company and bargained for his life. So I offer you the satisfaction.
[Saito’s attendant offers a gun to Cobb]
Dom Cobb: It’s not the way I deal with things.
Dom Cobb: What do you want from us?
Saito: Inception. Is it possible?
Arthur: Of course not.
Saito: If you can steal an idea from someone’s mind, why can’t you plant one there instead?
Arthur: Okay, here’s me planting an idea in your head. I say to you, “Don’t think about elephants.” What are you thinking about?
Saito: Elephants.
Arthur: Right, but it’s not your idea because you know I gave it to you. The subjects mind can always trace the genesis of the idea. True inspiration is impossible to fake.
Dom Cobb: That’s not true.
Saito: Can you do it?
Dom Cobb: Are you offering me a choice? Because I can find my own way to square things with Cobalt.
Saito: Then you do have a choice.
Dom Cobb: Then I choose to leave, sir.
Saito: How would you like to go home? To America. To your Children.
Dom Cobb: Can’t fix that. No one can.
Saito: Just like inception.
Arthur: Cobb, come on.
Dom Cobb: How complex is the idea?
Saito: It’s simple enough.
Dom Cobb: No idea is simple when you need to plant it in somebody else’s mind.
Dom Cobb: If I were do this, if I even could do it, I’d need a guarantee. How do I know you can deliver?
Saito: You don’t. But I can. So do you want to take a leap of faith, or become an old man filled with regret waiting to die alone?
[Cobb nods]
Dom Cobb: Assemble your team, Mr. Cobb and choose your people more wisely.
Arthur: Look, I know how much you want to go home. This can’t be done.
Dom Cobb: Yes, it can. You just have to go deep enough.
Arthur: You don’t know that.
Dom Cobb: I’ve done it before.
Arthur: Who did you do it to?
[Cobb doesn’t answer]
Dom Cobb: I’m just doing what I know. I’m doing what you taught me.
Miles: I never taught you to be a thief.
Dom Cobb: No. You taught me to navigate people’s minds. But after what happened, there weren’t a whole lot of legitimate ways to use that skill.
Miles: What are you doing here, Dom?
Dom Cobb: I think I found a way home. It’s a job for some very, very powerful people. People who I believe can fix my charges permanently. But I need your help.
Miles: You’re here to corrupt one of my brightest and best.
Dom Cobb: What I’m offering, you have to decide for themselves.
Miles: Money.
Dom Cobb: Not just money. You remember, it’s the chance to build cathedrals, entire cities, things that never existed. Things that couldn’t exist in the real world.
Miles: Come back to reality, Dom. Please.
Dom Cobb: Reality? Those kids, your grandchildren, they’re waiting for their father to come back home. That’s their reality. And this job, this last job, that’s how I get there. I would not be standing here if I knew any other way. I need an architect who is as good as I was.
Miles: I’ve got somebody better.
Miles: If you have a few moments, Mr. Cobb has a job offer he would like to discuss with you.
Ariadne: A work placement?
Dom Cobb: Not exactly.
Dom Cobb: They say we only use a fraction of our brain’s true potential. Now, that’s when we’re awake. When we’re asleep, our mind can build almost anything.
Ariadne: Such as?
Dom Cobb: Well, imagine you’re designing a building, alright? You consciously create each aspect, but sometimes it feels like it’s almost creating itself, if you know what I mean.
Ariadne: Yeah. Like I’m discovering it.
Dom Cobb: Genuine inspiration, right? Now in a dream, our mind continually does this. We create and perceive our world simultaneously and our mind does this so well that we don’t even know it’s happening. That allows us to get right in the middle of that process.
Ariadne: How?
Dom Cobb: By taking over the creative part. Now this is where I need you. You create the world of the dream. You bring the subject into that dream and they fill it with their subconscious.
Dom Cobb: Well, dreams, they feel real while we’re in them, right? It’s only when we wake up that we realize that something was actually strange. Let me ask you a question, you never really remember the beginning of a dream, do you? You always wind up right in the middle of what’s going on.
Ariadne: I guess, yeah.
Dom Cobb: So how did we end up here?
Ariadne: Well, we just came from the, uh…
Dom Cobb: Think about it, Ariadne. How did you get here? Where are you right now?
Ariadne: We’re dreaming?
[waking up as her dream is collapsing]
Ariadne: If it’s just a dream, then why can you…
Dom Cobb: Because it’s never just a dream is it? And a face full of glass hurts like hell. When you’re in it, it feels real.
Ariadne: Five minutes? What we were talking like for at least an hour.
Dom Cobb: In a dream your mind functions more quickly. Therefore, time seems to feel more slow.
Arthur: Five minutes in the real world gives you an hour in the dream world.
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