Film review: Inception (12A)

With most Hollywood blockbusters you check in your brain at the box office in exchange for some 3D glasses and a swaying vine of drool.

For this high velocity high concept original you not only need to hold onto your own noggin but also rent out a couple more, co-opt your neighbour's and smuggle in a stack of Post-Its under the popcorn.

For this multi-layered dreamscape conjured by Brit writer-director Christopher Nolan is a riddle wrapped in an enigma slotted in a Russian doll stored in a Kinder egg at the bottom a quarry beneath 1,400ft of unfinished Su Dokus, Cern schematics and tangled wire coat hangers.

Leonardo DiCaprio is corporate spy Dom Cobb who specialises in invading people's dreams and stealing their secrets.

It's bad enough that Dom and partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) screwed up their last job when the mark, Saito, figured out the ruse but Dom's own demon (dead wife Marion Cotillard) is increasingly polluting his "extractions" and stealing focus.

So when Dom has to make amends and take on a near impossible "inception" - the planting, rather than removing, of an idea - he needs a top team and a plan as dizzying as an upside down cake in a hall of mirrors.

So he recruits naive dream "architect" Ariadne (an underused Ellen Page) and muscle man (an excellent Tom Hardy). Saito (Ken Watanabe) also comes along as insurance against a double-cross.

But Dom doesn't let on how dangerously deep they have to go to plant the idea. Only when it's too late does he let on that to save their lives and rescue his own soul they have to execute separate deceptions simultaneously in an array of co-dependent Freudian realities, each teetering like a stack of plates at an understaffed Italian.

Nolan is no stranger to convoluted narratives or big-screen epics - he helmed the devilishly complex Memento and hit the big time with The Dark Knight.

To corral this 4D chess game Nolan needs to deploy wordy exposition in double-quick time and razor sharp edit suite logistics all without shortchanging on the breathtaking visuals and a hefty emotional punch.

Usually other people's dreams are as interesting as a Lego marsh warbler but Nolan has fashioned a formidable escapist fantasy that nourishes and perplexes like a plate of sausages in a Stonehenge jus.

– From July 2010