DiCaprio stars as a corporate raider in mind-bending 'Inception'

I love this movie!

Christopher Nolan's insanely imaginative and intelligently trippy "Inception" is "Mission Impossible" led by a corporate Freddy Krueger in a mind-bending adventure that could have been designed by artist M.C. Escher.

My brain still hurts from trying to absorb it all. But it's a good kind of hurt.

Just when you think "Inception" can't possibly become more complex and more commanding of our attention, it does. Then does it some more.

Yet, if you're paying attention (yes, you must!), you can keep up with what's going on even as you witness five parallel levels of reality unfolding at the same time.

Oh, and something that happens in one reality impacts what happens in the others.

(I warned you that it was insanely imaginative and intelligently trippy.)

Taking a tip from "Raiders of the Lost Ark," writer/director Nolan kick-starts "Inception" with the kind of bravura action sequence that most movies save for their climaxes.

It's an elaborate scenario in which professional "extractor" Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) leads a team scheme to steal information from a wealthy industrialist, Saito (Ken Watanabe), inside his dreams.

Big fake!

It's actually a test run so that Saito can see how Cobb works his highly illegal dream heist.

Saito isn't interested in hiring Cobb to steal corporate secrets. He wants Cobb and his team to plant an idea - an "inception" - into the dreams of his business rival's son, Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy) so he will think splitting up his father's corporate empire was self-inspired.

Cobb assembles his usual team of extractors: right-arm assistant Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt); Eames (Tom Hardy), a "forger" who can assume any identity in a dream state; and Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a supreme dream weaver armed with the potent sedatives Cobb needs to induce collective sleep.

He adds a new team member to become his dream architect, someone who can design the details in a dream so that they appear real.

Her name is Ariadne (Ellen Page), a student recommended by Cobb's university teacher father-in-law (Michael Caine).

Yes, Cobb has a wife, the alluring and mysterious Mal (Marion Cotillard), who pops up in his dreams and tries to kill him or at least mess him up during his extractions.

Mal is dead, yet her memory continues to haunt Cobb, who, like the epic hero Ulysses, wants nothing more than to go home, but cannot.

Unlike most movies based on dreams where anything can happen and nothing makes sense, Nolan's dream worlds come with a specific set of rules.

Such as, if you make too many changes while in a dream scenario, the people populating that dream - they're called "projections" - will become angry and attack you.

And if you die in a dream? No biggie. You wake up. If you die in a dream within a dream? You wake up in the first dream.

It sounds insane, I know.

The genius of "Inception" is that it quietly educates us on the rules of dream existence without the crutch of a voice-over narrator or a professorial authority to explain things.

"Inception" qualifies as a bold cinematic achievement far greater than "The Matrix," a sci-fi thriller where the special effects were so overpowering, they brought the narrative to a crawl so we could stop and admire them.

The disorienting effects in "Inception" are just as amazing, but Nolan skillfully employs them as part of the story so that they actually propel the movie along.

At almost two and a half hours long, "Inception" can't afford a loss of narrative velocity.

Whether it's a Parisian cityscape folding over on itself, or a "Matrix"-like fight in an upside-down hotel corridor, the effects in "Inception" are hallucinogenically addictive.

Don't be surprised if your brain hurts.

In a good kind of way.

<p class="factboxheadblack">'Inception'</p>

<p class="News">★★★★</p>

<p class="News"><b>Starring: </b>Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Tom Berenger, Tom Hardy</p>

<p class="News"><b>Directed by:</b> Christopher Nolan</p>

<p class="News"><b>Other:</b> A Warner Bros. release. Rated PG-13 for violence. 148 minutes</p>