The idea is that Cobb will convince Fischer to dismantle this empire and, in return, Saito will have the murder charge preventing Cobb from returning to America dismissed. In the time-honoured trope of the ‘mission’ action movie, Cobb hires a team of dream specialists to assist him, played by Elliot (then Ellen) Page, Tom Hardy and Dilip Rao. Nolan, in what was perhaps his most ambitious project at that time, revels in the opportunity to create multiple levels of reality in a kind of apotheosis of the Hollywood dream factory.