Look hard enough and you can find any number of differing opinions as to how many plots, themes, genres, etc. there actually are in cinematic fiction. Most films tend to belong to one genre, though many sub-genres may also exist within the overall framework. Buried beneath the philosophy, psychology and special effects, Inception is, at its core, a heist film… with a twist. Rather than deconstructing a vault in order to extract a valuable treasure, Cobb, Yusuf, Arthur, Eames, Ariadne and Saito (along for the ride) have to build one from the outside in, that they may deposit and secure something valuable. The method by which they achieve this is deceptively familiar. Like the stages of any heist, each level of dream that they traverse is a checklist of heist tropes.

Formulating the Plan
This is perhaps the most pedestrian element of the heist genre in Inception. Though it is edited in a non-linear fashion, it simply lays out the plan that the dreamers intend to execute. Of course, as expected, things do not go according to plan, which fits within the architecture of the heist film.

The Secret Code
As with many a heist, Inception‘s begins with a secret code. A code the dreamers must create rather than obtain. More specifically, they must have Fischer, the mark, create it. The entire first level dream sequence is designed around this basic task. The dreamers use both strong-arm and sting techniques to achieve this. Using a trick from every Mission: Impossible movie, Eames disguises himself as Fischer’s godfather, Browning. Again, however, rather than trying to extract information from Fischer, the goal is to get him to receive information that he will use against himself on the lower levels.

Neutralizing Security
This dream is really interesting. Though its main intent is to create a rift between Fischer and Browning, its purpose from a genre perspective is to neutralize Fischer’s security, which in this case is his own militarized subconscious. In most heist films, like Ocean’s Eleven or National Treasure, this stage of the theft is a much more nuanced affair, either deceiving security by hijacking surveillance, or rendering them unconscious. In Inception, taking out security is a much more violent event, with the dreamers engaging in a firefight with Fischer’s subconscious projections. Other films, most notably Heat and, more recently, The Town, have employed this method as a means to show the protagonists boxed-in and resorting to combat in order to escape. However, as in The Matrix, the violence here has the element of a virtual catharsis, as the security personnel are merely dream projections.

The Break-in
This again is a multi-faceted element, and it has many of the heist genre elements at work. At this point, the dreamers have left two of their members, Yusuf and Arthur, behind in the previous dream levels, so the attrition element of the heist film is in play. Yet at the same time, Arthur and Yusuf are still active players in their respective dream levels. The main objective here is to crack the vault itself. But this has been combined with a fortress infiltration element to raise the stakes. It is also here that Mal, Cobb’s wife, the femme fatale, the unexpected but inevitable element, appears to shoot Fischer and seemingly thwart the dreamers plan. Eames even states out loud, “That’s it then? We failed?” He also utters the thought of every thief who has been stopped just short of his goal, “I really wanted to see what was in there.” In this case, what’s in there is simply whatever Fischer brings with him. This monkey-wrench is common at this stage of a heist film. You can see it at work more simply in The Italian Job, when Charlize Theron’s Stella discovers that the safe model she is tasked with breaking has been changed at the last minute.

The Hail Mary
Finally, the last stage of the heist has Cobb and Ariadne attempting to improvise in order to salvage the plan. By shooting Fischer and sending him down another level of consciousness, Mal incorporates another genre element, the kidnapped team member. What’s interesting here is that recovering Fischer is the only purpose for Ariadne and Cobb to enter another dream. The emotional reconciliation that Cobb has with Mal is merely the method by which this must be accomplished.

Leave No Man Behind
Though this stage is not necessarily common to the heist film, it nonetheless is used in an unusual and interesting fashion. At the start of the first dream sequence, Saito has been shot, and each successive dream level has simply been stretching this out to avoid him plunging into limbo. When Fischer is shot, it is also understood that Saito is unlikely to survive the same dream level (the snow fortress), so a rescue must be attempted. This stage highlights a couple of genre conventions. From the camaraderie perspective, Cobb is neglecting to leave a fellow soldier stranded on the field of battle, even if his motives are not entirely altruistic (if Saito is lost, Cobb goes to prison). Additionally, getting Saito out of limbo is a kind of prison break, the catch being that Saito is a prisoner of his own mind.

Deconstructing Inception in this manner, one can see how elegantly Nolan has taken a well-established genre and given it a unique perspective. Creativity need not mean designing something that has never before been done, but rather taking what has been done and giving it room to breathe.

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