After watching the movie, Inception, I was wondering if it’s actually possible for a extremely powerful business person to make one phone call that erases a criminal record. Apparently that’s what Mr. Saito did for Dicaprio’s character in the movie, but i remained a little skeptical considering how far that call must go.
any thoughts?
I refer you to the Wolfe’s Razor*:
This is a movie about people entering another person’s dreams . . .
*Named after Gary K. Wolfe, who wrote Who Censored Roger Rabbit?
In other movie-related science, I refer you to one of Sandra Bullock’s more forgettable films, The Net, where the bad guys and their evil computer have been systematically removing all traces of poor Sandra’s character from all of the nation’s databases, including her drivers license, credit cards, birth certificate and anything else she could use to prove she exists.
Of course, at the end of the movie she heroically uploads a virus to the evil computer, and all of her records magically reappear.
The dude also buys a huge company effectively overnight.
It’s possible to posit that Saito has an in with the prosecutor chasing DiCaprio that lets him force the prosecutor to withdraw the indictment. The prosecutor still probably has to go to court to have the indictment dissolved, and other notifications have to be made to get DiCaprio off the watch list at the entry point to the US.
Basically, he could start the process with one call. DiCaprio would still probably get picked up and detained while his situation gets sorted out.
The whole character of Mr. Saito, his suspiciously vague business & business relationship to the dude whose dreams they were in, et cetera, are what push me towards the “It was all a dream” answer.
Plus Saito had made the agreement ahead of time. Everything could have been put into place and the phone call merely to put things into action.
If you are referring to what I think you are referring to, then it’s a silly concept.Like Reality Unless Noted is what most people actually believe, and really the only way to make sense out of fiction, as there’s no tension if absolutely anything can happen that isn’t specifically described.
Or, to quote another TV Tropes page, “Consistency aids Willing Suspension of Disbelief.” Breaking that for any significant number of people is one of the easiest ways to be considered a bad writer.
My suggestion: if you can suspend disbelief for the other hour and a half of the movie, how is the last part such a stretch? 
A lot of the movie has to do with questioning your surroundings to determine if you’re in a dream. Beyond the specified dream sequences made apparent to the audience, it is reasonable to apply the same focus to the overall narrative – afterall, the ending is left ambiguous with the top-spinning, thus leading us to question every aspect of the supposed reality that Cobb and these characters are in.
I know I replied earlier giving a realistic scenerio but perhaps it’s possible that Chris Nolan did this purposefully. There are a lot of apparent plot holes like what happened after Mumbai to the corporation chasing Cobb and how does Mal’s totem work for Cobb. These could be holes like making a phone call to make the charges go away or it could be that Cobb is in a dream (where is his totem?) and everything works out for him.
If it is in a movie or in a work of fiction…
ANYTHING is POSSIBLE! 
But that doesn’t mean anything should happen.