In the 2010 film Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb. Cobb is a professional extractor who enters shared dreams to steal secrets from the subconscious of corporate targets. His rare expertise makes him valuable, but his troubled past and guilt over his wife, Mal, repeatedly threaten his work.
The film begins when Cobb and Arthur perform corporate espionage through dream-sharing technology. Their mission changes when businessman Saito asks Cobb to perform “inception”: planting an idea rather than extracting one. Cobb accepts because Saito promises to clear the criminal charges preventing him from returning to his children in the United States.
Cobb is the team’s point man, while Arthur handles research and logistics, Ariadne designs dream architecture, Eames impersonates people inside dreams, and Yusuf supplies the sedative. A common mix-up is confusing Cobb with Saito, Eames, or Arthur; those are important members of the same dream-heist ensemble, but DiCaprio’s character is specifically Dom Cobb.
Christopher Nolan wrote and directed Inception, which was released in 2010 and combines science fiction, film noir, and heist-film ideas.