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The state of play of multiplex moviemaking has become so depressing that a big-budget, massively popular movie based on an original concept is interesting simply by default.

Christopher Nolan’s new brainy blockbuster, Inception, is one of these, though it’s fair to say the movie looked intriguing ever since viewers were exposed to the chutzpah of its WTF? marketing materials. A shrewd and enigmatic trailer coupled with the director’s impressive back catalogue would have put this movie on the map even if this were a year — or a decade — chocked to the gills with original ideas. Which it isn’t.

Inception is a gutsy sci-fi slant on Edgar Allan Poe’s timeless “deep man, deep” question: “Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?”

The onion-like plot, which unravels layers of universes wrapped around each other, centres on a team of mind-penetrating mercenaries whose mission is to extract information from a powerful CEO by visiting and toying with his dreams. Dream worlds, you see, can be “physically” designed and constructed by architects, with the details left to be filled in by the dreamer. They can’t be controlled, but they can be steered in certain directions.

A whiplash sharp screenplay, penned by Nolan, feels like it was written by some kind of super-programmed cyborg from Akihabara. There are twists, turns, fake-outs and universes-within-universes.

The multiple universes schtick means he never has an excuse to let the pace take a dive, and he never does — either sending characters further down the rabbit hole or to another layer that exists above them. On every level one of the characters must remain “awake” to take care of those in the layer/dream below, who are sleeping inside their … sleep. Don’t worry — it will all make sense. Sort of.

The central concept affords the director some splendid opportunities for visual chutzpah. Nolan relishes the job of mirroring the characters’ ability to design, build and toy with worlds that look just like ours but have a different and nebulous set of rules. The filmmaker gives himself a pass card for endless opportunities to toy with spatial properties. The special effects are great, and, importantly, employed in moderation.

Nolan is white-hot right now, having completed a trio of outstanding thinking people’s movies (The Prestige, The Dark Knight and this). His direction mixes up the elements in Inception with style and aplomb: visually it is a treat, an earthquake powerful soundtrack cranks up the tension big time, and the acting is solid. Leonardo Di Caprio gives another frame-chewing performance and the rest of the cast have got his back.

Inception hammers home the point that the idea behind the title is about creating a new idea, not pilfering existing ones. This concept is too good, too tempting, too fitting not to interpret as Nolan’s criticism of Hollywood during these years of rampant ideas recycling, of which he himself has played a part.

Inception will remind general audiences what it’s like to see a multiplex movie they can’t easily pigeonhole or predict. If there is a more intellectually invigorating blockbuster this year, I’ll eat my hat inside somebody else’s dream within a dream within a dream.