In Cosmopolis, David Cronenberg delivers the cinematic equivalent of being stuck in an UberPool with a billionaire who won’t stop quoting obscure economic theory while staring out the window, wondering why the world smells like failure. Based on Don DeLillo’s novel—a book that read like performance art even before someone decided it should be a movie—Cosmopolis is sleek, sterile, and somehow more emotionally barren than a Russian novel printed on sandpaper.
It’s also the most boring movie ever made about prostate exams, capitalism, and cream pies.
Robert Pattinson stars as Eric Packer, a 28-year-old multi-billionaire asset manager with the emotional range of a frozen pancake and a haircut so sharp it could open mail. The entire film takes place during one day as Eric travels across Manhattan in a white stretch limousine, determined to get a haircut. That’s it. That’s the plot. The man is hemorrhaging billions of dollars in real time, the yuan is tanking, anarchists are throwing rats, and his world is crumbling—but by God, he needs that trim.
Inside his limo (which might as well be a sensory-deprivation tank lined with arrogance), Eric meets a rotating cast of people who drop by like philosophical food delivery: his chief of theory, his currency analyst, his doctor, his art consultant, his mistress, and a guy who throws pies in the faces of the rich. Each conversation is a masterclass in monotone metaphysical rambling, where no one says what they mean because Cronenberg doesn’t believe in natural dialogue anymore. Everyone speaks like they’re on ketamine and just remembered they read Derrida once.
Robert Pattinson does what he can, but he’s fighting a losing battle against a script so wooden it gives termites clinical depression. He delivers his lines with dead-eyed detachment, which is probably intentional—after all, Eric Packer is supposed to be a metaphor for alienation, detachment, the collapse of late-stage capitalism, and probably erectile dysfunction. But there’s a difference between playing numb and playing boring. Pattinson spends the entire movie slouched like a man being slowly vacuum-sealed into his own hoodie.
Every scene is a philosophical tennis match played in molasses. Samantha Morton drops by to lecture Eric about cyber-capital and time perception. Juliette Binoche shows up for a quick limo tryst and a conversation about Rothko paintings that somehow feels less erotic than a tax audit. Paul Giamatti finally stumbles into the third act with bloodshot eyes, greasy hair, and a gun, delivering a manic performance that feels like it wandered in from a much more interesting movie. He talks for fifteen straight minutes about paranoia, unemployment, and despair while Eric lounges around like he’s deciding whether to care or just die in a leather chair.
And then there’s the sex. Oh yes. Cronenberg wants you to know Eric is wealthy, detached, and haunted by the void—so naturally, he has emotionless sex with multiple women in different parts of his limo while never unbuttoning his personality. One particularly awkward scene involves Pattinson receiving a prostate exam mid-conversation while discussing global finance. If you’ve ever wondered what it looks like when someone tries to maintain eye contact during invasive medical procedures while explaining currency speculation, Cosmopolis has you covered. Literally. With latex gloves.
The film is visually sterile. The limo is a hermetically sealed techno-womb where nothing feels real—not the people, not the city outside, not even the sandwich someone forgot on the console. Cronenberg, known for his body horror and visceral storytelling, here opts for antiseptic detachment. The camera floats, the lighting is clinical, and the tension never rises above ambient jazz. It’s all mood and no momentum—like watching a luxury watch tick toward existential doom.
Yes, Cosmopolis is trying to say something. It’s about the collapse of systems. About how money and data have replaced meaning. About the alienation of the hyper-privileged. About rats being the new currency (really—this is a theme). But just because a film has themes doesn’t mean it has a pulse. Cronenberg has made films about psychic warfare, twin gynecologists, and fetishistic car crash sex that felt more human than this two-hour intellectual hostage situation.
The dialogue is particularly punishing. Nobody talks like a person. They talk like essays being read aloud by malfunctioning robots. “Time is a corporate asset now. It belongs to the free market.” “Each day is structured by the chronology of loss.” “Talent is more erotic when it’s wasted.” These are actual lines of dialogue, spoken with the sincerity of a eulogy and the warmth of a morgue drawer. At a certain point, you start to suspect the film might be a prank—an elaborate art installation designed to see how many critics will call it “brilliant” before quietly checking their watches.
The most maddening thing about Cosmopolis is that it thinks it’s smart. It thinks it’s bold. But watching it is like being cornered at a party by someone who wants to explain why capitalism is dead while chewing on a cigarette filter and refusing to blink. You want to care. You want to engage. But eventually you start praying for an asteroid to hit the limo just to break up the monologue.
Final Thoughts:
Cosmopolis is a film that traps you in a bubble of static, mood, and dead philosophical jargon. It’s an exercise in highbrow inertia, where everything means something but nothing feels like anything. It’s sleek, cold, and full of theoretical chatter that never adds up to a compelling story. Cronenberg tries to dissect the emptiness of modern wealth and alienation, but instead creates a film that’s as soulless as the world it critiques.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 prostate checks.
Watch only if you have a fetish for economic despair, joyless sex, and men talking about time while the world burns quietly outside their limo. Otherwise, take the subway—it’s faster, cheaper, and might actually go somewhere.
