The film opens with Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) unconscious on a beach. He is found by an armed guard and brought into the chamber of an elderly man, who speaks to him cryptically. Cobb is carrying a small metal totem and a gun with him.
The plot cuts back to reveal a crime inside a dream, performed by Cobb and his team, including a point man, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and an architect named Nash (Lukas Haas) who crafts and maintains the balance of the dream world. They are inside the mind of Saito (Ken Watanabe), who, unknown to them, is aware of their deception and is auditioning them for his own crime.
The rules of the dream world are explained: if an individual is hurt in the dream world, they will experience pain in a very real sense. But if they die in the dream, they will merely wake up.
The team and Saito are brought back to the real world (in Japan), where they are joined by a mysterious device in a briefcase that injects compounds into their systems, lulling them into a shared dream experience.
The team escapes with the appearance of having eluded capture by Saito, but Cobb and Arthur are confronted by Saito when attempting to leave the country. Saito convinces Cobb to take the job of inception (the implantation of a thought within a person's mind) by offering him a way to go home to his children.
Cobb recruits Eames (Tom Hardy), a forger who can shift his identity inside a dream, as well as a new architect named Ariadne (Ellen Page), a student who appears to be all but a prodigy at constructing dreams. While Ariadne trains inside Cobb's mind, she sees and slowly comes to understand what is haunting him: a vision of his deceased wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) that continuously disrupts his dream world.
The team's target for inception is Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy), son of a late corporate rival. The idea is a complex emotional suggestion that will ultimately lead Fischer to disband his father's empire. To achieve their goal, Cobb's team will have to pass down through several levels, each a dream within the last. Time slows down with each level, as in five minutes of real time would equal an hour in the first dream, 10 hours in the next, and so on.
Because of the drugs used and the depth of the dreams there is state of limbo that will be entered if a person dies within this particular dream experience. The time within limbo is compounded so drastically that even a few moments of real time could seem to be decades.
We learn that Cobb and Mal spent many years in the limbo state, before coming back to reality as their younger original selves. They clung to totems, tiny objects carried to remind the dreamer of their state. Mal's totem (which is now carried by Cobb) was in the opening scene and appears frequently. He suggests that in his dreams, it spins indefinitely.
Mal suffered a psychological breakdown after waking from limbo, convinced that the real world was still to come after her death. She leapt out a window with Cobb watching but unable to intervene, leaving the police a letter indicating her depression, and his supposed guilt. Cobb subsequently fled the country.
The team boards a Boeing 747 transporting Fischer, drugging him without his knowledge, and entering into a dream with him. They have help from Yusuf (Dileep Rao), the chemist who developed the compounds specific to the deep dream state they are attempting. Inside the first level, the team locates Fischer and kidnaps him only to be assaulted by a group of mercenaries created by Fischer's trained subconscious.
Saito is injured badly, but not allowed to die for fear he would lose his mind within the limbo state. Eames takes the identity of Peter Browning (Tom Berenger), Fischer's godfather, to try and extract information from him. Eventually the team pushes down into the next dream level, while inside a moving van being chased by mercenaries.
The second level is a hotel where the team lulls Fischer into their confidence, and convinces him that he must find out why his own right-hand man is turning against him. The third and final level is a mountainous compound where the secret is stored, and Fischer must break in to find it.
During the attempt to break in, Fischer is killed by Cobb's projection of his dead wife, and is lost into the limbo state. Cobb and Ariadne follow him down in an attempt to salvage the mission. They are confronted by Mal, and it is revealed that Cobb knew an inception was possible because he planted the idea that the world Mal was in was fake, causing her to leave limbo in the first place. Mal attempts to convince Cobb to stay in limbo, but Ariadne shoots and kills her.
Following this, Cobb and Ariadne are able to return Fischer to the mountain compound. When Fischer confronts his father in this dream state, he realizes that his father had wanted him to be his own man and make his own choices. During this time Saito has died, and Cobb remains behind in the limbo state to locate him and bring him back. When Cobb finds Saito he is now an old man, and the context of the opening scene is revealed.
Everyone wakes up, alive and well. As per his deal with the powerful Saito, Cobb is given leeway to re-enter the United States. He is reunited with his children. The final shot shows his totem, in mid-spin, beginning to wobble. The scene then cuts to black, leaving it up the viewer to decide if it's a dream or reality.
The film focuses on Ip Man's early life and the story of how he learnt Wing Chun. In contrast, Ip Man and Ip Man 2 focus on the events in his life that took place during the Second Sino-Japanese War and after he moved to Hong Kong.
After Han mends Dre's injuries using fire cupping, they go to Cheng's teacher, Master Li (Yu Rongguang), to attempt to make peace, but the brutal Li, who teaches his students to show no mercy to their enemies, challenges Dre to a fight with Cheng. When Han declines, Li threatens him, saying that they will not be allowed to leave his school unless either Dre or Han himself fights. Han acquiesces, but insists the fight take place at an upcoming tournament, and that Li's students leave Dre alone until the tournament. The amused Li agrees.
Han begins training Dre, but Dre is frustrated that Han merely has Dre spend hours taking off his jacket, hanging it up, dropping it, and then putting it back on again. After days of this, Dre refuses to continue, until Han explains to him that the repetitive arm movements in question were Han's method of teaching Dre defensive block and strike techniques, which Dre is now able to display instinctively when prompted by Han's mock attacks.
Han emphasizes that the movements Dre is learning apply to life in general, and that serenity and maturity, not punches and power, are the true keys to mastering the martial arts. During one lesson in the Wudang Mountains, Dre notices a female kung fu practitioner (Michelle Yeoh, in an uncredited cameo copying the movements of a cobra before her, but Han informs him that it was the cobra that was imitating the woman, as in a mirror reflection. Dre wants Han to teach him this technique, which includes linking Han's hand and feet to Dre's via bamboo shafts while practicing their forms, but Dre's subsequent attempt to use this reflection technique on his mother is unsuccessful.
As Dre's friendship with Mei Ying continues, she agrees to attend Dre's tournament, as does Dre her upcoming recital. After sharing a kiss at an outdoor festival, Dre persuades Mei Ying to cut school for a day of fun, but when she is nearly late for her violin recital, which has been rescheduled for that day, Mei tells him that her parents have deemed him a bad influence, and forbid her from spending any more time with him.
When Dre finds Han drunk and despondent, he learns that it is the anniversary of his wife and son's deaths, which occurred years ago when he lost control of his car while arguing with his wife. Dre reminds Han that one of his lessons was in perseverance, and that Han needs to heal from his loss, and tries to help him do so. Han then assists Dre in writing a note of apology to Mei Ying's father, who, impressed, allows Mei to attend the tournament.
At the tournament, the underconfident Dre is slow to achieve parity with his opponents, but soon begins to best them, and advances to the semifinals, as does Cheng, who violently finishes off his opponents. Dre eventually comes up against Master Li's students, in particular a classmate of Cheng who is instructed by Master Li to break Dre's leg.
When his student insists that he can beat Dre, Master Li sternly tells him that he doesn't want him beaten, but broken. During the match, Li's student delivers a devastating kick to Dre's leg, along with a series of brutal follow-up punches. Although Li's student is disqualified for his illegal strikes, Dre is incapacitated, which means Cheng will win by default.
Despite Han's insistence that he has earned respect for his performance in the tournament, and that he needs to learn when to walk away from a fight, Dre convinces Han to use his fire cupping technique to mend his leg, in order to see the tournament to the end. Dre returns to the arena, where he confronts Cheng. Dre delivers impressive blows, but Cheng counters with a debilitating strike to Dre's already injured leg.
Dre struggles to get up, and adopts the one-legged form he first learned from the woman on the mountain, attempting to use the reflection technique to manipulate Cheng's movements. Cheng charges Dre, but Dre flips, and catches Cheng with a kick to his head, winning the tournament, along with the respect of Cheng and his classmates, both for himself and Mr. Han.
There was 11 small cinema inside the newly built building at Persiaran Raja Muda Musa. That was on Monday when I went to watch this movie. On Wednesday I went to watch another movie called KNIGHT AND DAY (RM 10).
It was a nice movie. Although I'm expecting the movie story would be an exciting movie but it turn to be a bit of comedian movie between the two actor and the actress. Anyway it is worth to watch. Quiet entertaining but I liked Prince of Persia the most. For me is a must watch movie.
