A pleasantly trippy Borges love-child of a movie. Lisa and I both really enjoyed it and both want to see it again.
Comparisons to The Matrix, while understandable, aren’t really apt. There’s tons of action but at heart this isn’t really an action movie (or a caper film). Best way I can think to describe it is that it’s like a type of anxiety dream I sometimes have where I’m in a strange city trying to get to a meeting I’m already late for, only to be continually sidetracked. Such dreams involve a lot of running around, a lot of plot complications, and plenty of cool special effects, but none of that stuff is really the point—what the dream is about, really, is the underlying sense of reaching, and reaching, and reaching for something that I’m never going to get.
So really it’s a mood piece. The film I’d compare it to is the Soderbergh Solaris (only with tons of action, and a caper). It’s not for everybody. It’s long, it takes its time, and by the end it’s running six nested narrative strands plus a hidden agenda. But like I say, we really got into it.
If you do see Inception and like it, and you haven’t seen Tony Gilroy’s Duplicity yet, I’d recommend renting that as well. That one really is a caper film, but one that demands (and rewards) the same sort of attention span.