The movie starts with Dom Cobb (Leonardo) washed up to a beach, he is injured and delirious. He opens his eyes once and sees two kids playing on the beach. Some men with guns take him to an old man telling him Cobb is alone with a revolver and a brass top. The old man tells Cobb, he had once known a man who had that top with him and his name was Cobb.
The scene shifts to Cobb, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Saito (Ken Watanabe) having a quite dinner, while Cobb is explaining him that if Saito wants to protect himself from Extraction (stealing an idea from dream) he would have to let Cobb in to his mind. Tell him all his secrets. Saito seems uncertain and a little suspicious and leaves the room saying he will consider the proposal. Cobb and Arthur move out of the room and Arthur says Saito suspects something is wrong. Cobb says 'All the secrets are in that room. He looked right at it when i said safe'. Arthur then points out a woman in the crowd to Cobb and asks 'what is she doing here?'. Cobb then goes to meet her and he calls her 'Mal'.
Next scene we see Mal and Cobb in a room, Cobb makes Mal sit on a chair and ties a rope to the leg and ties to climb out of the window down the building. We get to know from their conversation both know each other very well. Cobb climbs into the same room where he was previously having dinner and opens a safe and takes an yellow envolope. Just then Saito and Mal enter the room with guns. Cobb asks Saito if Mal told him the truth. Siato says 'what truth? that we are all in a dream?' Then we see Cobb, Arthur and Saito actually sleeping in a room and a fourth guy monitoring them. Out side the house they are sleeping in, mobs are creating a riot and getting closer.
Back to the dream, Mal brings in Arthur and shoots him in the leg, because killing someone in the dreams will only wake them up, but pain is part of the brain and its the same in real or deam world. Cobb shoots Arthur in the head and kills him, and Arthur wakes up in the house. In the dream, all hell breaks lose, fighting and gunshots and buildings crumbling, Cobb tries to read the papers in the envolope.
In the sleep house Arthur tells the monitor to wake up Cobb, who pushes Cobb into a bath full of water. With amazing dream visuals of water breaking through walls and entering into dream in sync with the real world bath water, Cobb wakes up, and so does Saito. There is a struggle between all, and Cobb says Saito dint put all the secrets in the safe and he needs them for the men who hired him, he threatens to kill him. Saito then realizes even this is a dream and it is the 4th guy's. As the rioting mob from out side breaks into the house all 4 of them wake up in a train. Cobb and Arthur and the dream architech leave the train. Saito wakes up alone with a teenage kid in his compartment.
Next scene we realize, Cobb has been running from US authorities and he has two kids and they are with their grandmother. Cobb and Arthur decide to lie low for a while thinking their employer would not be very please about the botched job. Saito catches up with them with his men and offers a proposal.
He wants Cobb to carry out Inception (putting an idea successfully into someones mind). If he did, then he can go back home to his kids and Saito will make sure all charges against him are dropped. Cobb agrees to this in desperation knowing it is an extremely complicated process.
To assemble the dream team he goes to meet his father who is a professor in an university and asks for a good architech. His father introduces him to Ariadne (Ellen Page) saying she is better than him. Cobb then takes her into a dream and makes her realize in dream you can design your world. She starts building the world as she goes walking in the dream. Cobb then explain all the nuances of designing a dream, that you can allow someone else's subconcious into your dream and thats why Cobb is there, and all the people around him are his projections or shades, where as the dream world itself is designed by Ariadne.
As she keeps changing the worlds he warns her that too much of change warns the subconcious that its not real but a dream, and people in the dream start staring at her. She creates a bridge out of memory, which Cobb recollects as one of the places at which he spent time with Mal, he worriedly tells her creating something exactly like a memory brings out the sides of subconcious that we wont like. Suddenly everyone grabs them and Mal walks up to Ariadne and stabs her. Both Cobb and Ariadne wake up in a workhouse, she freaks out completely and leaves. Cobb tells Arthur that she will be back and he goes to get a forger (imitator) and with Saitos help brings Eames (Tom Hardy ) and Yusuf (Dileep Rao) into the team. Yusuf tells them about a sedative which is used for complicated layered dream.
The team decides to do a three layered dream set, with the third layer being the crucial point where the idea will be planted. The target is Robert Fischer, Jr., a multimillion dollor oil company heir, with his father dying he is ready to take over completely. His god father is Browning a key part of the empire. Saito wants Cobb to plant an idea in Fishers head to ruin his own empire.
While prepping for the job Ariadne learns that Mal is Cobbs deseased wife and actually sees a bit of his past while in his dream one day. He has issues that are making him uanble to architech any dream without bringing in Mal as a spoiler. Ariadne warns him he should tell others. Cobb tells her that, this is why he is avoiding knowing the architecture of the dream so he doesnt know the secrets.
Arthur explains to Ariadne about totems, something which tells a person whether he is in a dream of real life. Cobb has a small brass top ( same as the one we see in the beginning of the movie), Arthur has a loaded dice. Arthur explains that in a dream a spinning top would never stop. Ariadne sets to build a totem for herself.
When Fisher Sr. dies, they decide to execute the plan on a plane to LA in which Fisher Jr. is carrying his fathers coffin. Saito books the entire flight, and Cobb slips Fisher the sedative. 10 hours of real world gives 1 week in the first level dream, 6 months in the second level and 10 years in third level dream. Their wake up call is the free fall which brings them out of dreams.
They enter the first level of dream. It is raining heavily. Arthur, Saito and Eames kidnap Fisher and take him to a warehouse. They get ambushed on the way by gunmen, and Cobb explains that Fisher might have been trained against dream extraction and these are his defenses. Cobb's subconcious brings a frieght train right in the middles of the road. They some how reach the warehouse but Saito gets hit. When Arthur tries to kill him, Cobb stops him saying the sedative they all took will not allow them to just wake up. If you die before the sedative wears off you just go into a limbo, a middle world which could mean eternity to a mind stuck in there. By the time you wake up your mind is scrambled and you lose yourself.
When Ariadne confronts him about being the cause of the train in the middle of the road, he confesses that he cant seem to get Mal out of his dream. He tells her the story how she died. During their last dream together, something goes wrong and they get stuck in a limbo. Cobb tries to convince Mal that this isnt real and they should go back. They spend 50 years in the limbo when finally she agrees to come back. But when they did, Mal keeps thinking they are still in dream and that dying is the only way to wake up. She calls Cobb to a hotel room on their anniversary and tells him she sent a letter to their attorney saying Cobb is trying to kill her. She says she did that so it would be easy for him to die. She jumps off the balcony and with cops chasing him Cobb flees the country.
Eames impersonates Browning and screams like he is being tortured. Arthur and Cobb talk to Fisher wearing masks. They tell him there is a safe in his office and they want code to that. Fisher denies knowing any safe, when he hears Browning's screams he asks them to let him speak to him. Eames impersonating Browning, tells him his father wrote a second will dissolving the empire and he, Fisher can use it if he wants to. Fisher wonders why he would want to dissolve his empire, Browning says may be his father wanted him to build his own, and that he loved him. Fisher says his father dint love him coz his last words to him were that he was disappointed.
Fisher's defenses start closing in on the warehouse. They decide to do the second level dream in a van. Yusuf is there to drive the van and he should drive it off the bridge. That free fall is their trigger to come back from dream. They enter second dream sequence architectured by Ariadne and Arthur. It is a restaurant in a hotel where Cobb meets Fisher as his security officer. He makes him realize its a dream because he doesnt remember how he ended up there and the gravity keeps shifting (Deam stage 1 Fisher's defenses are chasing and trying to destroy the van). Fisher's own mind projects Browning in the dream as the bad guy who is behind the kidnap, the projection Browing confesses saying Fisher empire is all he ever worked for and he couldnt let him destroy it with the will in the safe.
Cobb convinces Fisher that he should enter a dream and know browning's secrets. They all gather in a room and enter third level.
Third level of dream is set in snowy mountains, where the safe is in a house guarded heavily by armed men. Cobb tells Fisher to go to the house and open the safe. Eames and the rest draw the guards away.
Dream state 1: van drives off the bridge. 10 seconds left state 2: No gravity situation.Floating. Arthur is getting everyone together. 3 mins left state 3: Fisher is struggling to get to the safe. 60 mins left
After a long struggle, Fisher finally reaches the safe. But just then Mal appears, when Cobb hesitates to shoot her , she shoots Fisher killing him. Cobb then shoots Mal. Everybody gathers around Fisher. Even Saito dies. Ariadne proposes they go in deeper and get Fisher out. He must be in Cobb's limbo as Mal is nothing but a projection of his mind.
Ariadne and Cobb enter 4th level dream. The world in which Mal and Cobb were stuck for 50 years. They go to the house and find Mal sitting in the kitchen. Mal accuses him of leaving her telling him he promised they would grow old together. She tells him he is confused and the place they are in is the real world. He should stay there. Cobb tells Mal that she isnt real and Cobb has been guilty a long while. The brass top is actually Mal's.
Jumping to flash back when they were stuck in limbo Mal locked the top away in a safe. Cobb found it one day and put the idea in her mind that that was not a real world. He left the top spinning in the safe. When the idea became a strong belief. Mal agrees to leave the world, they both lie on the train track to die and wake up in their house. But the idea takes possession of her mind and she dies thinking she would wake up. And thats how Cobb knows inception is possible.
In the kitchen Cobb tells Mal, this is not real and that he is going back.
Dream state 4: Cobb tells Ariadne he will have to find Saito.Ariadne finds Fisher and pushes him off the cliff. and falls down herself. state3: Eames defibrillates Fisher who wakes up and goes into the safe. finds his father there, who gives him the will from the safe beside the bed. (This is Fisher's own dream). Ariadne wakes up state2: Arthur has pulled everyone into lift and creates a free fall situation with explosives. Dream state1: Van is about to hit the water
Van hits the water. everyone wakes up and swims up the river.
Back to the first scene. The old man talking to Cobb, we realize its Saito. Cobb tells him he should come back, Saito takes the gun in his hand. Next scene, Cobb is waking up in the plane and so is Saito. He makes a call. After deboarding the plane Cobb gets past immigration without any problems. His father comes to pick him up and takes him to his old house where he again sees his kids playing out in the backyard.
Cobb spins the top on the table to see if this is real, just then the kids see him and run to him. He goes to hug them and the camera focuses on the top spinning, and just when we are about to see if it is going to stop the screen fades black.
(Forwarded)
