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Cosmopolis2012 | 109 min | R | 1.85:1
“Cosmopolis” requires viewers to set aside their every thought, perhaps every motor function too, and focus on the enormous exchanges of knotted dialogue launched between comatose characters. There’s no possible way to appreciate the movie in a half-hearted manner, yet writer/director David Cronenberg isn’t exactly inviting outside interest in this polarizing work. With its stretches of byzantine conversations, bloodless characterizations, and inert thematic push, “Cosmopolis” is a rare miscarriage from the always exciting filmmaker. Cronenberg seems like he has something specific, possibly devilishly satiric in mind, but his screen instincts are numb, constructing a feature that lurches from scene to scene, convinced it possesses a wicked intellectualism it rarely finds the energy to display. 
Ready to experience another day in New York City, billionaire asset manager Eric (Robert Pattinson) has set his sights on a haircut at a barber shop across town, requiring his driver (Kevin Durand) to navigate clogged streets preparing for the arrival of the President. Armed with a state-of-the-art limo keeping him abreast of work and social issues, Eric rolls through the city slowly, catching up with his mistress (Juliette Binoche), frigid wife (Sarah Gadon), advisor (Samantha Morton), and chief of finance (Emily Hampshire), with a reality of financial ruin hanging over his head after his betting ways sour. Losing his comfort and sanity as the day carries into night, Eric faces a final test when a mentally disturbed ex-employee (Paul Giamatti) has plans to assassinate his former boss, thus gifting him one honest achievement in a ruthless world. Adapting the novel by author Don DeLillo, Cronenberg undertakes a rolling odyssey with “Cosmopolis,” commencing a tour of New York City on an especially active day. It’s not just the President holding up traffic, but also a riot staged by anti-capitalist types wielding dead rats to underline their message, and a there’s a funeral procession for a rapper as well, making transportation impossible. However, Eric is committed to the symbolic haircut, generating an episodic adventure for the emotionally frozen man, who welcomes familiars into the back of his deluxe limo, built with numerous video screens, cork insulation to keep street noise at bay, and it’s even fitted for a urinal, making exit unnecessary. It’s the ultimate rich man’s toy employed a day when it’s not advantageous to be a rich man, catching up with Eric as he slowly loses his fortune, a disaster that loosens his grip on reality as well. And the bad news won’t stop pouring in, despite his best intentions to stave off the inevitable with personal interactions of varying importance to his dead, black heart. 
“Cosmopolis” traces the downward spiral of a capitalist, and I honestly wish there was something gripping or enlightening about the descent. Instead, Cronenberg has fashioned a frosty viewing experience with stilted dialogue, finding characters winding around a full page of explanation to achieve the meaning of a single word. The conversations are protracted, lacking shape and momentum, with the filmmaker lost in the architecture of the writing, admiring his own skills of adaptation, with hidden meanings, cunning connections, and morose confessions lost in a fog of shapeless exposition. “Cosmopolis” asks viewers to hang on every syllable, yet there’s no sense of community to Eric’s passage through town, with characters coldly introduced and quickly shooed away. Even sensuality is rusted shut, with Eric’s female entanglements (including a wife he wants desperately to have sex with) carrying all the tension of a staring contest where the participants are physically unable to blink. There should be bite to this movie, or perhaps something approaching unease. Instead, Cronenberg has mummified the work, making Eric’s trip to his destiny a verbose bore that’s not worth the interpretative effort. A major thorn in the side of the film is Pattinson, here in his first challenging role after years playing a sparkly vampire in the “Twilight” pictures. Cruelly, the Brit is miscast as a hermetically sealed American, carrying a wobbly accent and an insincere poker face, leaving a potentially lurid subplot concerning Eric’s thrill-seeking ways with stun-guns and firearms to walk on by without expression. It’s a disappointing performance, especially working with Cronenberg, who’s usually terrific with casting choices. Eric should be this deteriorating shell of a man, accepting punishment from those out to harm and humiliate him, yet Pattinson plays every scene with the same robotic expression, lacking the thespian integrity required to communicate doomsday in the eyes of a demon. 
“Cosmopolis” aches to tumble into madness, with Cronenberg working to amplify strained peculiarity with a running gag concerning an asymmetrical prostate that vexes Eric. Murders are thrown into the mix, along with a cream pie attack, furthering the notion that whatever insanity DiLillo was cooking up on the page should’ve remained there. Cronenberg is a master of cinema, but he’s strangely powerless with “Cosmopolis,” facing technical failures (the greenscreen work is surprisingly subpar) and screen stagnancy, unable to break through and deliver the satiric thunderclap he’s itching to release. Starring: Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Sarah Gadon, Mathieu Amalric, Jay Baruchel, Kevin Durand Director: David Cronenberg » See full cast & crew |
 
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