TRAILER: Leo in dreamland in a mindbender of a movie

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Every night, the dream world provides a temporary and blissful escape from reality.

As we slip into an unconscious haze of fractured memories and fantastical imaginings, the brain downloads all of the useless information we’ve absorbed during the day, files anything important, and reboots.

Occasionally, our dreams can be so vivid and intense, we could swear they were real, and it’s this tantalising confusion of fact with fantasy that underpins this hugely-ambitious thriller.

Inception heaves at the seams with complex scientific ideas that demand patience from the audience to stay with director Christopher Nolan as he distils his elaborate vision, one layer at a time.

As Batman Begins and The Dark Knight proved, the writer-director can orchestrate action sequences with aplomb, but the adrenaline-charged thrills of this film are purely a sideshow unless you understand and accept the script’s meticulous, twisted logic.

As one of the characters says: “Do you want to take a leap of faith or become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone?” Those who take that leap are in for a mind-bending treat.

In the hi-tech world of corporate espionage, brilliant thief Dom Cobb (DiCaprio) and his team are unparalleled.

They infiltrate the minds of powerful men and women and when the unsuspecting targets enter the fragile dreamstate, Dom plunders their subconscious of its priceless secrets.

Powerful businessman Saito (Watanabe) approaches Cobb with a proposition: to plant a single idea in the mind of rival Robert Fischer Jr (Murphy) before he inherits the company from his terminally-ill father, Maurice (Postlethwaite).

Dom enlists the services of regular right-hand man, Arthur (Gordon-Levitt), novice dream architect Ariadne (Page), talented forger Eames (Hardy) and chemist Yusuf (Rao), who mixes the powerful sedative that allows them to slip into dreams within dreams within dreams.

However, Dom conceals a terrible secret from the team: the projection of his self-destructive late wife, Mal (Cotillard), could escape his dreams and sabotage the entire mission.

By the time the team realises the threat, it’s already too late.

DiCaprio powerfully embodies another tortured soul while Gordon-Levitt has all of the fun in the best action sequence, fighting a gun-toting henchman in a hotel hallway and the interlocking rooms as they rapidly rotate through 360 degrees.

As the film approaches its frenetic resolution, a final shot charges Nolan with committing the cardinal sin of storytelling.

But somehow he gets away with it.