There is a great deal about Inception that's restricted to Christopher Nolan's desires to constantly reference or lift some kind of aesthetic from the Michael Mann movie, Heat and Heist films in general. The suits, the thugs, the need to over complicate an otherwise simple idea, etc.. Cillian Murphy's three-level dream world is probably one of the biggest visual cue for Heat and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (the snow level). Now that you point it out, a lot of the things that happen in the movie follow the "horror movie" rule of thumb: people doing stupid things or being present in order for there to be a plot (Sato and Ellen Page). I do agree, that as a movie about dreams, there should've been a little more imagination in the dreams themselves, but we're talking about a man that doesn't like stray far from what he perceives as realism through a theatrical lens. While that's not a bad thing altogether, it's pretty limiting. He doesn't exactly give himself much leeyway for anything remotely fantastic (within the boundaries of his own rules) if he can't dip it in shadows and monotone dialog.

That said, I enjoyed the film myself the first couple times I watched it. The excessive exposition in repeated views past 2, however, hampers the enjoyment factor as I feel like I'm taking the same lecture class over and over again.