Say you’re in a dream, within a dream, within a dream…and in that highrise of hallucinations, Christopher Nolan writes and directs a movie that’s part Matrix, part Ocean’s 11, part Mission: Impossible, and part Bond. Maybe even a little Dark Knight, just because Nolan can’t help it. It’s his subconscious you’re in, after all. You are the dreamweaver, tasked with planting an idea in his head—an Inception—that when he wakes he just can’t refuse. The idea’s a dangerous one: to create a meta-action flick, one with brains and brawn, where battles are fought on levels even Freud couldn’t understand. And when you both wake, you expect Nolan to do so successfully. Got it?

It’s okay if you don’t. Nolan’s latest blockbuster spends half its time trying to explain the concept of an "inception" to the audience, and not always to great effect. He enlists Leonardo DiCaprio as the anti-hero Dom, a mental assassin or "extractor" who can steal information from the unsuspecting by infiltrating their dreams through an IV, serum, and a suitcase. (Basic mechanics.) A power-hungry businessman (Ken Watanabe) convinces Dom to do the reverse—to plant an idea in a rival’s subconscious—in one last job: the job that will basically absolve Dom of some unnamed sins. He assembles a team a la Danny Ocean: an architect who constructs dream worlds and doubles as his personal shrink (Ellen Page), a chemist with a basement full of dream-seeking users (Dileep Rao), a brawny funny man with a talent for impersonations (Tom Hardy), and a hired hand (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who … well, I don’t know really know what he does. But he’s really good at fighting in zero-gravity hallways. And off they go.

Much has been made of the special effects in this movie, and let it be said: They’re pretty spectacular. When a city folds over on itself and Page and DiCaprio walk along the street, then up another at a 90-degree angle…or when an explosion in one dream rocks the walls in another dream, that sets the bar pretty high. Though Nolan serves up exposition for an hour like a giddy engineer describing a new invention, he excels when the stakes are higher and an actual conflict emerges in the final, tri-level dream. Things get tense (thanks in part to an excellent score by Hans Zimmer) and Marion Cotillard appears as Dom’s wife Mal, an unlikely villain who helps unravel the story of Dom’s dark past. It’s not The Godfather of action flicks, but it’s insanely creative—and maybe just a little insane in general. Reality will look a little duller afterward, and that’s a thrilling result for an $11 ticket.

Inception opens in theaters and in IMAX nationwide on July 16.