A dream within a dream within a dream within a mind screw

"A caper from Christopher Nolan. Unlike your average heist, it's not about taking something, but about leaving something behind."--TV Tropes' Inception page

Science fiction action film Inception takes place in a world, ostensibly our own, where the technology exists to enter other people's subconscious via the medium of dreams. Dom Cobb is an extractor: a professional thief who specializes in nipping into sleepers' heads and stealing their secrets right out of their mind. Despite his unconventional talents, all he wants to do is put his gun down and see his estranged children again, but given that he's being aggressively ... pursued ... by a disgruntled former client and is the subject of an international arrest warrant, going home isn't easy is completely out of the question.

Then the subject of a bungled extraction attempt makes him an offer. Japanese businessman Saito, having seen Cobb's gift firsthand, wants him to perform inception, or sticking an idea into someone else's head, on his business rival Robert Fischer. In return Saito promises to dissolve all Cobb's legal problems, freeing up a way for him to reunite with his children once again. Hesitantly, Cobb accepts the offer, ropes together a team of equally morally questionable dream technicians and orchestrates the jump into Fischer's subconscious. Thus begins the mind screw part of the film, which is, to be fair, not so much "wtf is going on" as "wtf just happened and how did we get here?!". It's a fast film, exceedingly so, and the two and a half hours of screen time go by pretty quickly.

Inception is noted for its original storyline (infiltrating dreams!), effective use of special effects (folding Paris into a taco! spinning Joseph Gordon-Levitt around in an antigrav hallway! digitally crumbling an entire dream world!), badass characters (Eames! Arthur!) and all-star cast (Leo DiCaprio! Marion Cotillard! Ellen Page! ... y'know what, just go look up the cast list, I'd have to list over fifteen names here). I swear I'll blackmail somebody if it doesn't end up on the Oscar list. You'll help me, right, Chronos? Right? -depraved grin-

No, but seriously, folks, my summary doesn't do it justice. (I suck at summaries anyway. Took me two hours to finish this post, not to mention an utterly rubbished first draft from last night.) So go out and watch it while it's still in the cinemas. It will blow your mind. Shet, I'd even offer a money back guarantee if I could figure out how to force the theatre chain to let me into their stockrooms ... wait ...

~Mnem- "Who says you don't learn anything from movies? Off to go orchestrate a mind heist, shh" -osyne