From a Shakespearean tragic hero to a millionaire stockbroker, Leonardo DiCaprio has depicted the weird and wonderful across our screens for over twenty years. Since his debut in Academy Award nominated What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, his tear-jerking performance in Titanic, he has gained notoriety as a 90s heartthrob. More recently, we have seen him play Danny Archer in Blood Diamond, a plantation owner in Django Unchained and Hugh Glass- a frontiersman on a fur trading expedition- in The Revenant, all the while scooping up a string of awards along the way.
Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi thriller has DiCaprio entering people’s dreams and stealing their thoughts — only this time, for that proverbial one last job, he and his team are hired to implant an idea inside someone’s mind instead of boosting the usual cerebral data. How did a film with a plot so byzantine, and a set-up so offbeat, ever become such a massive hit? Credit Nolan’s dexterity with dialogue and interlocking setpieces, but let’s not also forget DiCaprio’s remarkable, underrated performance as a brilliant, tormented thief trying — and failing — to keep his own demons at bay.