COSMOPOLIS Review

A frequent theme in the oeuvre of writer-director David Cronenberg is how we become alienated through the ubiquitous.  We fail to notice how everyday facets of our lives are changing us on a fundamental level, and causing us to be alienated from ourselves and each other physically, mentally, and emotionally.  In Videodrome, Crash, and eXistenZ, Cronenberg explored how technology warped our relationship to the world to the point where technology became organic and the organic became mechanical.  In his last movie, A Dangerous Method, Cronenberg explored how psychotherapy causes people to become distanced from their emotions and psyches.  In his latest film, Cosmopolis, Cronenberg turns his eye to capitalism, and has created a darkly comic, coldly calculating look at a world where everything is for sale and nothing has value.  Like A Dangerous Method, Cosmopolis suffers from the lack of an emotional impact, which is the inevitable result of a story where characters have become disconnected from emotion, but the story will still leave your head spinning. Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson) is going for a haircut.  It's an innocuous errand except Packer is the billionaire head of a financial institution he inherited from his father.  Packer has maintained his wealth the same way many modern financial titans do: he moves around numbers.  But today, he has moved the wrong numbers, bet on the Yuan, and his money is disappearing by the millions.  But this doesn't faze Packer, and nothing really does.  And as he rides in his limo towards his haircut, ...