In the very near future of the cinematic present, a young billionaire named Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson) decides one morning that he’s going to climb into his limousine and head across Manhattan to go to the barber he insists on visiting. The city is mobbed, however, by traffic jams from the visiting President and a celebrity funeral, and the limo crawls slowly through the city over the course of a day as Packer pulls various employees and business partners into his isolated oasis as he inches his way across an increasingly desolate city in the face of a global economic crisis that mirrors his own deteriorating mindset.
That is actually as succinct a summary of David Cronenberg’s newest film,Cosmopolis, as you could ever hope to ask for. Based on a novel by the same name by Don DeLillo, Cronenberg once again delves into the inner psyche of a troubled character in a challenging drama that manages on the surface to appear intimate and small, but reveals that underneath it all lie deep waters. Like his recent masterpieces, A History of Violence and Eastern Promises,Cosmopolis is as mature and considered a drama as one could ask for. That, however, is where the similarities end, and where this review strikes out from the concrete into the strange territory of this nightmare road trip.
