Writing a movie is hard work, and when all is said and done, there are always going to be a few small subplots that get ignored in the third act. But sometimes a filmmaker forgets an important plot thread. And by "important," we mean "one that was actually way more important than the main plot."

6 Inception -- What About Cobol?

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Dom Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is a corporate spy hired by shady companies to investigate their competitors' dreams. It's established in the first scene that his particular brand of corporate espionage doesn't exactly fall under the heading of "ethical business practices" -- he's more like a prettier Bernie Madoff. So for instance, when he botches the job for a company called Cobol Engineering at the beginning of the film, Cobol sends its hit men after him. This results in an obligatory "Mr. Nolan, your script has just gone 20 pages without an action beat" chase through the streets of Mombasa.



"Boy, I sure could go for a spontaneous running gunbattle."

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But Cobb has bigger problems to deal with. He's accused of murdering his wife, and the film is all about him doing "one last job" so he can clear his name and move back to America and see his kids.

Finally (SPOILER!) he appears to have accomplished just that in the final scene. The job is successful, he comes back home and he hugs his kids -- whether the whole thing was a dream or not is the subject of another article.



Spoiler: Leo is a replicant.

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But What About ...

Uh, what about Cobol?

Over the two-plus hours of the run time, the film seems to forget that this huge, unscrupulous corporation still wants to murder Leo's ass and has black vans full of thugs capable of doing it (they've taken out one team member already). And let's face it: If they were able to track him down to Kenya, it shouldn't be too difficult to find him in America. At his house.

So the ending to this film becomes significantly less happy when we realize that, hell, they'll probably now have to murder his kids, too, to get rid of any witnesses.