Like you said, Scott, it's introduced way too late. But the other reason it's not great, is there's just too much of it. Like a lot of Nolan's stuff, it feels first drafty and overstated. You could easily trim this dialogue to half its current length and still get all the relevant points across.

i also thought fischer's "training" seemed kind of there out of the blue just as a means to create more conflict...but yes i absolutely agree they're amending their own rules, and too late in the game

Two additional points: (1) If you were to color code exposition so that all the lines were, let's say, purple, and you spread out your script page by page on a long wall, then stepped back to take a macro view of it, most of the purple should -- as a rule of thumb -- appear in Act One. That is the 'natural' place for it because we expect it to be about setting up the story, a script reader will cut you slack with exposition there they might not otherwise later in the script. (2) At least the characters in this scene in Inception are screaming at each other. A well-known action movie producer once told me, "If you have to have exposition, create some sort of conflict for the characters so there can be a lot of yelling, fighting and so forth." The point being that tends to hide the exposition.

Earlier, James and I were talking about the terrible exposition in the Most Skilled Extractor scene. Even though it is in act one. It doesn't work. James pointed out "The problem is — they don’t show anyone else being a badass at the same job." Personally, I think it's bad exposition because it isn't really true. Cobb kind of sucks at his job. He does things he shouldn’t do, he breaks every rule he sets out, he endangers everyone – even people who weren’t aware of the danger he posed – and he’s constantly being outdone by Mal. So unless the actual inception in the story was making Saito think Cobb really is the best, the line is just another throwaway.