JD N

Great story, unsatisfactory storytelling (for a Nolan movie). Temporal pinch may as well become the new normal for the entire time-travel genre for many years to come. Its reference to electron, which can be viewed as a particle moving forward in time, and positron, moving backward in time, both starting at the same vertex (starting point), made me realize some of my favorite films from Nolan, including Dark Knight and Interstellar, do not begin to explore the depth of his genius. Where I have problems with this movie is how this movie feels rushed from the second act and on, as if the script was originally written for at least two full movies, but later squashed into one. The individual characters, including the main protagonist, didn't leave much meaningful background story or character development for the audience to nibble on. Some of the core plot devices, trying not to spoil any, are simply thrown at us in a quick back and forth (compare this to the first Matrix movie, for example, where the movie spends essentially a quarter of the screen time to give Neo and the audience a tutorial on the confines of the fictional world). In this aspect, character building and storytelling of Inception, which I consider to be Nolan's worst, seem much more convincing than this movie. I hope Nolan revisits this gem in the near future and perfects what he couldn't this time.