Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a skilled "extractor," able to enter people's dreams to find information. A businessman (Ken Watanabe) hires Cobb to plant an idea in the mind of a competitor, even though this may not be possible. Cobb assembles a team (which includes Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ellen Page) and prepares for the complicated job, which will require creating three dreams-within-dreams. Unfortunately, the subject (Cillian Murphy) has been trained for such invasions, and the job will be far more dangerous than planned -- and then there's the fact that Cobb's dead wife (Marion Cotillard) keeps unexpectedly turning up inside the dreams and wreaking havoc of her own. But if the team fails, they could end up trapped in a subconscious limbo forever.