Dense, intense, brainy and beautiful to look at, Inception proves you don’t need 3-D technology to transmit a totally immersive cinematic experience.

Absent the volcanic force of a Joker-level star turn like Heath Ledger’s performance in The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan instead throws Leo DiCaprio into the vortex of a multilayered mind game blackened with guilt, adrenalized by James Bond–style pyrotechnics and burnished by the best production talent Hollywood money can buy.

The PG-13 rated Inception, opening Friday, extends Nolan’s longtime fascination with the treacherous self-betrayals of the human mind. His 2000 noir thriller Memento played end to beginning to reverse-track it’s hero’s short-term memory loss. Insomnia complicated its procedural find-a-killer plot by questioning the perceptions of Al Pacino’s sleep-deprived, hallucinating detective hero.