Inception

The movie starts with Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) washed up on a beach. He is injured and seems delirious. He opens his eyes once and sees two kids playing on the beach. Some men with guns (they appear to be guards) take him to an old man, telling the man that Cobb was alone and carried only a pistol and a small brass top. The old man tells Cobb that he recognizes the top, saying, "You remind me of someone... a man I met in a half-remembered dream. He was possessed of some radical notions."

The scene shifts to Cobb, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Saito (Ken Watanabe) having a quiet dinner in the same room as the previous scene. Cobb is proposing to Saito that he should hire him and Arthur (his business partner) to protect himself from "extraction," which is the process of stealing secrets from a person during a dream, when his or her mind is most vulnerable. Cobb tells Saito that he is the most skilled extractor there is and that he can train Saito's mind to defend itself against other extractors, but Saito will need to let Cobb into his mind completely. He mentions that extractors often steal information from subconscious hiding places, such as a safe, and Saito glances at a safe across the room. Saito seems uncertain and a little suspicious and leaves, saying he will consider the proposal. Cobb and Arthur leave the room and Arthur says Saito suspects something is wrong -- that, rather than trying to protect Saito from extractors, Cobb and Arthur are actually there to perform extraction on him.

Arthur then points out a woman in the crowd and asks Cobb, "What is she doing here?" Cobb tells Arthur to proceed with the job and then approaches the woman, whom he calls Mal. She is standing on a balcony and asks Cobb, "If I jump, would I survive?" He replies, "A clean dive, perhaps," and asks what she is doing there, to which she responds, "I thought you might be missing me." Cobb says he does miss her but can't trust her anymore.

In the next scene, Cobb and...