Cosmopolis

To say David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis is the worst film of the year so far would be to suggest that 2012 has produced bad films, which is not the case. At least not when you compare them to this incoherent, boring, complete mess of a film. There isn’t a single second of Cosmopolis that doesn’t pointlessly confound. Nothing makes sense, nothing intrigues – it is 108 minutes of laughable acting, misguided direction and dull writing that is about as far from interesting as a film can get.

I’ll do my best to rehash what I can remember from the plot, but this will prove to be difficult, as the words “plot” and “story,” as they relate to Cosmopolis, must certainly be bookended with quotation marks.

Eric, a young, New York City billionaire (Robert Pattinson), decides one morning he wants a haircut. And, despite many repeated warnings from his head of security about the dangers of braving the street, Eric climbs into his giant limo and spends the entire day going across town to get a fresh cut. Along the way, Eric individually picks up colleagues, random women, mistresses, his fiancé, a doctor, and countless others and engages them in lengthy discussions about uh, money, the crumbling city, revolutions, rats, waffles, rectums – who cares.

Nothing that is said makes sense in the context of anything. The conversations have nothing to do with one another, nor do they hold significance for any character involved. So, essentially, Cosmopolis is a movie in which volumes are spoken but nothing is actually said.

Look, I’m not one to brag. About anything. But I know my movies, and I can keep up with and follow just about anything. So for a movie to completely lose me as irrevocably and as quickly as Cosmopolis did really does not speak highly of the film. I’ve never walked out of a movie in my life, and it took every ounce of strength I had to stay put and see it through. (By my count, 12 others were not equipped with such strength, and walked out while exhaling heavy sighs of frustration.)

The nicest thing I can say about Cosmopolis is that it is in no way offensive. At least not to specific groups of people, say in the way Sex and the City 2 (which is the very worst film I’ve ever seen) is. Cosmopolis isn’t controversial, or marked by latent notions of bigotry or discrimination. It’s just a horrible film.

To say Cosmopolis is the worst film of David Cronenberg’s career would mean that we would have to acknowledge that a master made this movie, when we should really, seriously, truly do our best to forget this ever happened. F