Review: Inception (15)***

Melding elements of The Matrix with Johnny Mnemonic, it scatters plot and sub-plot around a labyrinthine storyline that thrusts Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his band of corporate spies into a desperate bid to carry off a successful anti-heist. Instead of stealing an idea, they have to insert one into their target's thoughts.

To do so they must immerse themselves in a murky (and unpredictable) dream world in which real life can be twisted, manipulated and utterly bent out of shape without the subject realising what is occurring.

The risk is to become trapped within several layers of dreams or, worst of all, to drift into limbo, there to age in lonely isolation while friends live on in the real world.

A visually stunning yet baffling tapestry of thoughts, theories and hypotheses, Inception combines awesome scenes of deafening gunplay with superbly realised apocalyptic cityscapes to present a unique globetrotting adventure.

It borrows from everything from the 007 movies to bleak, downbeat tales such as Vincent Ward's What Dreams May Come, emerging as both a heist drama and a romantic thriller, with Cobb's wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), as the enigmatic figure at its core.

Yet there exists a nagging suspicion that this may be Nolan's "Wachowski moment" in that, like the feted Wachowski Brothers, he has been seemingly handed a blank cheque to paint a mighty canvas of brilliance and innovation.

But just like The Matrix tailed off into self-indulgence and sententious pomposity, so Inception eventually loses the plot and disappears into a black hole of immense proportions. Still, there are moments of absolute virtuosity here. Nolan lingers on sleeping bodies as if they were addicts in a 21st century opium den. Cotillard's descent into madness is chillingly plausible. And an urban road race is straight out of Michael Mann's Heat with added grit.