Cosmopolis, not my cup of Friday night cinematic escapist tea after a taxing week of work. Not by a longshot. To be fair, perhaps to select art house movie fans, the new film from director David Cronenberg starring Robert Pattinson may be the perfect tedious dialogue-intensive subjective plot-lined diversion from all the wham bam eye candy summer spectacles that have hit multiplexes all summer long. And to them, all I can say is: “More power to you.”
Cosmopolis, is without question, an edgy eccentric cat that will test your attention span. Set in an alternate version of our present day world that is muddled in financial woes and heightened violent civillian protests, the film is difficult to narrow down to a simple logline. Robert Pattinson plays Eric Packer, a young billionaire who despite his head of security’s adamant advice, is hell bent on traveling across town in his stretch limo to get a haircut from his father’s aged barber. To complicate things on this New York City day, the intended route is plagued with bumper to bumper traffic, street riots, and death threats have been made to the visiting President of the United States.
Packer, who has a massive amount of his fortune wagered on a risky financial venture, heads out on this trek that predominantly takes place in the claustrophobic confines of his hi-tech limo. Along the way, various strange figures who factor into his life hop into the car as it happens by them during the drawn out odyssey. Each one-on-one exchange, whether it be with his aloof new billionairess wife (Sarah Gadon), technology chief (Jay Baruchel), art dealer (Emily Mortimer), financial advisor (Emily Hampshire), or a wordy ‘theorist’ (Samantha Morton), allows Packer to spout layer upon layer of long winded dialogue with a heavy helping of pretentious sarcasm.
Cosmopolis, based on the 2003 novel by Don DeLillo, evokes themes that not so subtly mirror today’s headlines made from the Occupy Movement and class struggles between the 99% and the 1%. Eric Packer, by design, is by no means an exciting character, and Pattinson plays him straight out with dead eyes and a flatline smirky delivery of an American accent laced with an ‘I’m better than you’ tone. It makes the film’s lead both fairly unlikeable and unrelatable, and doesn’t help us as we sit through Packer’s ill advised and far from incident-free day.
Pattinson, not for a lack of trying, has managed only a scant body of work outside of the Twilight series since he first took on the role of the pasty brooding vampire heart throb Edward Cullen. With the final installment of the blockbuster tween series hitting screens in November, the actor will have appeared in five Twilight films since 2008 (taking into account that Breaking Dawn has been split into two installments).
When he managed to find time to rest and squeeze in roles that did not require him to wearing fangs, they have been choices that in theory, were meant to test the waters of breaking out of the Twi-Hard demo. But the adaptation of Sara Gruen’s Water For Elephants, and the don’t get me started on Remember Me, with its desperate, unnecessary, and insulting final scenes link to the events of 9/11, hardly could be considered showcase leaps of his acting range. And despite clearly being Pattinson’s edgiest role to date, Cosmopolis won’t do it either.
There is the saving grace third act appearance by a sociopath played by Paul Giamatti, who never disappoints when it comes to stealing the show whether it’s in a lead or supporting role (now two in a row for Mr. Giamatti this summer, following his stand out scenes along side Tom Cruise in Rock Of Ages). In the tense twenty minute life or death climax, Giamatti succeeds in pumping some much needed life saving blood into the soulless film. The scene reminded me of the sequence in Boogie Nights where the bathrobe-clad Alfred Molina points a loaded gun towards Mark Whalberg and friends, set to the duet of Night Ranger’s Sister Christian and random exploding firecrackers.
But director Cronenberg, who has made his fair share of both straightforward films and experimental sidetracks, uses so little sound design beyond the dialogue track to augment his static scenes. Cronenberg even goes so far to explain that Packer’s limo has been thoroughly sound proofed to avoid adding in even the slightest of outside street noise. But the dead air issue is never more apparent when the stakes are at their highest at the end, and is what separates a classic scene from Paul Thomas Anderson’s film from a similar scene here that could have raised the tension level.
For the most part, if your mind tends to wander at a movie where you can hear a pin drop (much less hear the crackling of a candy wrapper or the rustling of a popcorn bag), you are better off at the adjacent theater at The Expendables 2 than trying to decipher the at times frustrating dialogue, rally through the tedious pacing, or endure occasional shock value twists that will test your patience even further. If anything, Cosmopolis certainly succeeds as serving as counter programming to every other film it is up against.
David Cronenberg is a versatile filmmaker with a resume that includes films I have seen more than once like The Fly, Dead Ringers, Eastern Promises, A History of Violence, and eXistnZ. This film just as easily could have worked on the stage given its minimal cinematic grandeur and enclosed settings. While I do enjoy a good David Mamet penned film, a stage to film translation mentality is best for keeping pace here.
I am not going to ramble on and on, when at the end of the day I feel that reviewing, whether it be film, TV, music, or literary, is all subjective. What one person may rate as four stars, the next may belittle it with zero. There certainly exists a whole other platform when it comes to films that can be scientifically proven to be bad films.
Pattinson now has the whole world ahead of him now in his post-Twilight career. Frankly I’d like to see him borrow a page from Hugh Grant’s mid-nineties career and take a crack at some crowd pleasing romantic comedies as a nervous nelly Brit next to Emma Stone, Kate Hudson, or Anna Faris. There is nothing wrong with a varied career path split between the art film and the safe film, and Cosmopolis is no where near the safe side. Perhaps this may very well be Pattinson waving the flag to his loyal Twi-Hards signaling that this is the way its gonna be from here on in.
Cosmopolis opens in New York and Los Angeles on August 17th, and nationwide on August 24.
Directed By: David Cronenberg
Rated: R
Running Time: 108 minutes
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