A film that leaves you feeling, "WTF?" This avant-garde work oozes with symbolism and metaphors. The first one you should pick up on is the rat. The rat symbolizes a universal currency when society is at its lowest point. Toward the end of the film, Eric's barber comments "You're hair is ratty." Investor Eric Packer (Robert Patterson) represents all rich people whose world must be destroyed to make way for the new. This is your basic Phoenix or Shiva philosophy. Eric is being driven through NYC as all kind of events are happening outside of his limo. Eric is shielded from these events as his financial world goes to ruin. The world outside passes by almost in a surreal fashion and at times he blocks it out altogether.We have the destruction idea as Eric has bet against the Yuan, Chinese currency. The theory implies that China is the new empire built upon the ashes of our American empire. Don't bet against it.The people who enter Eric's cab appeal to be bits and pieces of his psyche. This is brought out when one woman who prattles on about philosophy (some key metaphor points) and claims she is his "Chief of Theory." Sarah Gadon plays Eric's trophy wife, a woman he knows nothing about and hasn't slept with. Their whole relationship was odd and clearly symbolic of...God knows what. Eric builds his world on formula and balance when life has neither.For people who like their films straight forward, forget it. Good luck with this one.Parental Guide: F-bomb, sex, full frontal nudity (Patricia McKenzie). Perhaps the longest "finger wave" in film history.

Cronenberg's Cosmopolis is an adaptation of Don DeLillo's novel. The Novel is accepted as unfilmable an as one of the few novels which composes a precise image of our zeitgeist. The movie is not just based on Cronenberg's clever written script that could be a marvellous play for theatres but also a well directed movie with a talented cast and gets the audience into the atmosphere of a Japanese surreal anime. Nonetheless the movie is a marketing mistake of its kind. The negative reviews that emphasis the main actor Robert Pattinson's ex-sanguine performance are not to understand, since he is exactly as vampire as his character Eric Packer, a 28 years old egoist with a lot of money. However the reason of the box-office flop can be understood. First reason is the difference of target groups: It is possible that neither real Cronenberg fans (because of the poster of Pattinson on the foreground) nor Pattinson fans (since it's not a teenage movie) had the intention to see the movie. Second reason is he wrong advertisement: The audience watches an action trailer but finds out it is a Japanese surreal anime. This masterpiece of art proves us that even sci-fi legend David Cronenberg can flop on box-office.

I recently saw this movie and loved it, I came onto to IMDb and was surprised to see it had some very unflattering reviews, I think that's because some people just didn't get it.Yes the dialogue is contrived and strange, until you realise why.The whole movie sounds like a poem because it is, the characters are inside out, instead of hearing their boasts we hear their thoughts and if you don't get that point, I can see how you would think this is a bad movie.However when when you see the genius behind this creative device it all starts to make sense, thats why I'm giving this a decent score.All in all the movie itself could be any other like it, the underlying theme rather wreaks of 'Collateral' but the turning of the whole movie into a poem and the way the characters introversions are extroverted, genius.I liked it for that alone, it was a refreshing break from the staleness of forumlaic sensory diversion.I didn't know it was a Cronenberg until I saw the credits at the end but when I saw that name, it made sense, he always had a thing for the weird and twisting the boundaries of perception.In this he truly succeeded, even if the storyline itself doesn't stand up to scrutiny, the creativity of the concept has to be admired.

(16%) I wanted to like this I really did: a David Cronenberg crafted poke in the eye at big business capitalism with surreal twists and turns, satire, black humour, bite; but heavens above, this is an almost impossible film to enjoy, take anything from, or in most cases even make it until the end credits. I can't remember the last time a film that I wanted to see left me as cold as this one did. The over-riding focus here is on Robert Pattinson's character: a man who, like everyone else in the entire film, talks in pointless and annoying circles of pointless baggy gibberish that goes nowhere. Some, if not many of the lines are so terrible that it actually hurts, and I could dig deep into the depths of the hidden meanings and ideas, but quite honestly I'd rather remove my own finer nails with a pair of pilers because the film just isn't good enough for me to care. After not very long at all into this you can tell this is based off a novel deemed by most as totally unfilmable, as there's no real narrative anywhere, all the characters behave in a manner that make mental patients appear sane, while not one of them are interesting enough to make me care about what happens; of course, not that anything of any real note does actually happen. Any die-hard Cronenberg fans out there I'm sorry to report that this is near unwatchable pretentious garbage of the highest order.