Inception is a grandiose, ambitious science-fiction thriller. It is the meticulously crafted combination of architectural precision and unbridled creativity. It is a film of limitless potential. Its director, Christopher Nolan, appears to have a mind incapable of imagining conventional stories. On the other hand, this complexity, this ability to conceptualize on a large scale, comes at the expense of precision and clarity. It’s unclear whether the questions Inception raises are intentionally there to provoke thought and discussion, or whether they’re simply the products of oversight on Nolan’s part. Nevertheless, the film is so exciting, so inventive, so unlike anything in theaters right now that its copious holes and inconsistencies can easily be forgiven.

The film has inevitably drawn comparisons to many great sci-fi action films of yore. (I have seen it referred to as The Matrix meets James Bond, Total Recall meets Ocean’s Eleven, etc.) I will now offer my own take: Inception is eXistenZ meets Dark City. Or — because it is basically a heist/con flick that takes place within dreams — perhaps it is more like The Sting meets Waking Life. I could continue until exhausting every sci-fi movie and thriller I’ve ever seen, but the point is this: While it’s easy to pinpoint Nolan’s influences, Inception — about a team of dream-invaders hired to plant an idea in a young energy tycoon’s subconscious — is an innovative thriller that cackles in the face of easy description.

As such, Nolan’s epic is a beast of a movie both in length and in structure, which consequently leaves more room for error. It’s first half hour is essentially a lecture in which Leonardo DiCaprio’s Dom Cobb explains the rules of dream infiltration. (Inception’s “dreams” are not much like real dreams; the characters could just as well be entering “video games,” “virtual realities” or “matrices.”) Despite this heavy exposition, the film is not immune to creating new rules and rescinding others for the sake of convenience. This unintentionally pulls us out of the story — how can we invest in the film’s emotional core (Cobb struggles with his wife’s obscure death) when the structure and its rules continually change? This is something that may become clearer in subsequent viewings, something that Inception certainly warrants. It helps that its middle 90 minutes is an endlessly stimulating thrill ride, complete with a benchmark action set-piece on par with The Matrix’s bullet time sequence. Inception has the best of both worlds: It dazzles with groundbreaking thrills and stimulates the mind while never skimping on scope and ambition. This may very well be the next step in cinematic science-fiction.