I.

II.

INCEPTION
SYNOPSIS/PLOT

Dominic Cobb, and his business partner Arthur has the capacity to infiltrate the minds of
their targets using the dangerous art of Extraction, stealing and implanting valuable secrets
within the subconscious during the dream state. Cobbs unusual talent had made him a
notorious and the best player in such business, that even one of the most powerful people
like Saito, a Japanese businessman who had employed his services in performing a
corporate espionage with Fischer, the primary competitor of Sato, in order to set an idea or
incept the mind of Fischer in order to diversify the business of his father. In exchange of
this is Cobbs redemption, wherein hell be acquitted with criminal charge and thus, will be
able to go back to his family. If they succeed, it could be the perfect crime for the team and
himself. But no amount of careful planning or expertise can prepare the team for the
dangerous enemy that seems to predict their every move. An enemy that only Cobb could
have seen coming.
III.

Act 1
Dominic Cobb, together with his partner in crime Arthur perform a job for the Colter
Engineering and infiltrate and infiltrate the mind of Saito, a Japanese Businessman
through a shared dream. Saito was able to escape the deception primarily of Cobbs
fault, when Mal suddenly appeared from his sub-conscious. After their other
companion sold them out, Saito offered Cobb a form of redemption, that he was
actually auditioning the team to perform the difficult act of "inception": planting an
idea in a person's subconscious. Saito reveals his motive is to break up
the energy conglomerate of ailing competitor Maurice Fischer wherein he will find a
team that can infiltrate an inception in Robert Fischer, son of his main competitor in
the Electronics Company. Cobb initially declined the proposition, but after Saito
offered to clear him of criminal charges and can go back to his children, he accepted
the proposal.
Act 2
Cobb sets aboard in forming his team: Eames (Tom Hardy), a conman and identity
forger; Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a chemist who has the capacity to produce a
powerful sedative for a stable "dream within a dream" strategy, Ariadne (Ellen Page),
an architecture student that was the student of his father in the University, who was
tasked with designing the labyrinth and puzzle maze of the dream landscapes; and
Arthur. Saito insists on accompanying the team to verify the team's success, while
Earnes warned him that Tourists are not ideal for this kind of adventure wherein he
just disregarded. The team now devised several tactics in order to corner the young
Fischer and set an idea not based from them alone, but from the people that Fischer
is connected with, which is his family. Cobb also introduced Ariadne with the concept
of Totem wherein this mastered thing will help them classify a dream from reality.
If Cobbs totem stops, then it is perceived as a real world, and if it keeps on spinning,
then it is the contrary matter.
Act 3

Maurice Fischer dies in Sydney, and it is expected that his son Robert will
accompany the body on a 10 hour flight back to Los Angeles. Due to the repair of
Roberts private plane with Saitos undoing, he was able to be with Cobbs team, in a
Presidential class. Cobb sedates him bringing him into a shared dream with the other
team. At each layer of dream is expected to a different setting and circumstance,
and the person generating the dream stays behind to set up a "kick" or wake up
call that will be used to awaken the other sleeping team members who have entered
another dream layer deeper. This will prevent them in going to an infinite place
called Limbo when they are killed by Fischers subconscious fleet of armies. In the
first level, Yusuf's rainy downtown dream, the team abducts Fischer; however,
Fischer's trained subconscious projections attack, wounding Saito severely, with a
bullet in his chest.
Act 4
In the place of Fischers abduction, Eames, the identity forger, temporarily takes the
appearance of Fischer's godfather, Peter Browning, in order to plant the idea that Fischer
must reconsider his father's will, and to learn the code from his fathers safe box. Upon
unsuccessfully knowing the code and Fischers severe relationship with his father, Yusuf
drives the team in a van as they are sedated into the second level, a hotel dreamed by the
other team member, Arthur. Here, Cobb introduces himself as Mr. Charles, the head of
Fischers security when it comes to the subconscious mind. He introduced himself as
Fiischers protector wherein he also explained that there are men present in the hotel who
wanted to get him, therefore recruiting Fischer in his team, convincing him that his kidnapping
was orchestrated by Browning and that they are Fischer's subconscious dependency.

IV.

Dominick "Dom" Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and business partner Arthur (Joseph GordonLevitt) perform corporate espionage using an experimental military technology to infiltrate
the subconscious of their targets and extract information while experiencing shared
dreaming. Their latest target is Japanese businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe). Tiered "dream
within a dream" strategies are used and dreamers awaken by a "kick" such as falling. If the
dreamer is the one who awakens, the dream "collapses". Each "extractor" carries a totem, a
small object whose behavior only its owner can predict, used to determine whether a dreamer
is in someone else's dream. Cobb's totem is implied to be a spinning top that spins
perpetually in the dream state. The extraction from Saito fails when sabotaged by a memory
of Cobb's deceased wife Mal (Marion Cotillard).

V.

Saito reveals, after Cobb's and Arthur's associate sells them out, that he was actually
auditioning the team to perform the difficult act of "inception": planting an idea in a person's
subconscious. Saito reveals his motive is to break up the energy conglomerate of ailing
competitor Maurice Fischer (Pete Postlethwaite). Saito's idea is to plant the breakup thought
into the mind of Fischer's heir, son Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), motivating him to
disintegrate his father's company.

VI.

Should Cobb succeed, Saito tells Cobb he will use his influence to clear Cobb of a murder
charge, which will allow Cobb to return home and to his children. Cobb accepts Saito's offer.

VII.

Cobb sets about assembling his team: Eames (Tom Hardy), a conman and identity forger;
Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a chemist who concocts the powerful sedative for a stable "dream within
a dream" strategy; Ariadne (Ellen Page), an architecture student tasked with designing
the labyrinth of the dream landscapes; and Arthur. Saito insists on accompanying the team to
verify the team's success.

VIII.

The elder Fischer dies in Sydney. Robert Fischer accompanies the body on a flight back to
Los Angeles The team share the flight with Robert Fischer. Cobb sedates him bringing him
into a shared dream with the extractors. At each level in the layered dreaming, the person
generating the dream stays behind to set up a "kick" that will be used to awaken the other
sleeping team members who have entered another dream layer deeper. In the first level,
Yusuf's rainy downtown dream, the team abducts Fischer; however, Fischer's trained
subconscious projections attack, wounding Saito severely.

IX.

Eames temporarily takes the appearance of Fischer's godfather, Peter Browning (Tom
Berenger), to suggest Fischer reconsider his father's will. Yusuf drives the team in a van as
they are sedated into the second level, a hotel dreamed by Arthur. Here, the extractors recruit
Fischer, convincing him that his kidnapping was orchestrated by Browning and that they are
Fischer's subconscious dependency.

X.

In the third level, a snowy mountain fortress dreamed by Eames, Fischer is told they are in
Browning's subconscious, but they are really going deeper into Fischer's. Yusuf, under
assault in the first level, initiates his kick too soon by driving off a bridge, removing the gravity
of Arthur's dream world and causing an avalanche in Eames' dream, a kick which all missed.
Arthur improvises a new kick using an elevator that will be synchronized with the van hitting
the water, while the team in Eames' dream races to finish the job before the new round of
kicks.

XI.

Due to the effects of heavy sedation and multi-layered dreaming death during this mission will
result entering Limbo, an expanse of infinite raw subconscious. Limbo is a space not
dreamed by any one individual, but is shared space where one mind can make drastic
alterations of any kind.

XII.

While dying in Limbo will allow the dreamer to be awaken in the outer-world or upper dream
level, the time is stretched out and dilated (each dream level is roughly 20 times greater than

in the level above it. In Limbo, the deepest level of all, the planned ten hours of outer-world
time would be experienced as almost two centuries, hence the dreamer will unlikely realize
that the Limbo is a dream world; realization that one is in Limbo is necessary for the dreamer
in to wake up to the outer-world).
XIII.

Cobb reveals to Ariadne that he spent "50 years" with Mal in Limbo constructing a world from
their shared memories while seemingly growing old together. Returning to the waking world,
Cobb and Mal found less than three hours had passed. Convinced she was still dreaming,
Mal committed suicide and tried to persuade Cobb to do so too, by incriminating him in her
death. Facing a murder charge Cobb fled the U.S., leaving his children behind, ostensibly in
the care of his father-in-law, Prof. Stephen Miles (Michael Caine).

XIV.

Saito succumbs to his wounds, and Mal (Cobb's projection) sabotages the entire plan by
killing Fischer, sending them both into Limbo.[13]

XV.

Cobb and Ariadne enter Limbo to find Fischer and Saito, while Eames remains on his dream
level to set up a kick by rigging the fortress with explosives. Cobb confronts his projection of
Mal, who tries convince Cobb to stay in Limbo. Cobb refuses and confesses guilt for Mal's
suicide: using inception to plant the idea in her mind that the world they had been living in for
50 years was not real, Cobb had convinced her to leave Limbo with him through suicide, but
once back in the real world, she was unable to discern dreaming from reality.

XVI.

Mal attacks Cobb but Ariadne shoots her. Through his confession, Cobb attains catharsis and
chooses to remain in Limbo to search for Saito. Ariadne pushes Fischer off a balcony,
resuscitating him at the mountain fortress, where he enters a safe room to discover and
accept the planted idea: that his father wishes him to be his "own man", and that splitting up
the conglomerate might not be a radical notion.

XVII.

All team members other than Cobb and Saito ride the synchronized kicks back to reality:
Ariadne jumps off a balcony in Limbo, Eames detonates the explosives in the fortress, Arthur
blasts an elevator containing the team's sleeping bodies up an elevator shaft, and the van in
Yusuf's dream hits the water. Cobb eventually finds an aged Saito in Limbo and the two
remember their arrangement, presumably shooting themselves and awakening to outer-world
reality back on the airplane, where the entire team and Robert Fischer are riding.

XVIII.

Saito wakes up, glances at Cobb and makes a phone call, presumably to honor his
agreement with Cobb. The plane lands in Los Angeles and Cobb successfully passes
through U.S. customshis waiting father-in-law, Stephen Miles. Before reuniting with his
children who are playing in the backyard Cobb uses his totem (a small top which he spins).
Without looking at the top to see if it is spinning or has stopped he greets his children.