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.

Oh dear god, turned off after 15 minutes. I'm willing to concede that I might have missed the point of this film, but my life minutes/hours, I felt after 15 minutes, were better spent concentrating on the clothes ironing that I was doing rather than on this self indulgence.

I can appreciate that a lot of people don't "get" this movie, or find it pretentious or pedantic or just strange. But I'll have a go at what I liked about it. I liked that it walked a very fine balance between reality and dream, incorporating poetry and symbolism. I liked the complexity of the dialog - so complex at times that it seems the intention is not so much to be understood as to give an impression. It felt in places like Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal; it stares at the issue of mortality head-on. It also felt a bit like Fellini's Roma (the long highway scene) I thought the deadpan acting was perfect. And it was suspenseful, in the sense that you really will be kept wondering what will happen next to the main character.

It's a very challenging, difficult film to enjoy, but I did, mostly because the director has luckily found a clever and apt metaphor for the slow inevitable descent of society into chaos, mayhem, and oblivion which we're all currently experiencing, whether or not you realize it. Our world is on track to implode into some real horrible sh*t very soon, but everyone's coasting along like skaters on some very thin ice, seemingly unaware that their terrible fate lies inches away just below their shuffling feet. As the limo very slowly rolls and stops on it's interrupted journey through the mean, nasty city which is bursting into revolutionary madness the protagonist, a surprisingly compelling Robert Pattinson, manages to keep my gaze averted from all the increasingly ugly things occurring outside the tinted power windows and focused upon his sincerely fascinating face. I felt as though I was being invited. emphatically, to pay attention to the man behind the curtain, except in the case of this profoundly disturbing film the Wizard is not a loud mouthed little phony. No, this Master of this Universe is a genuinely powerful and twisted fellow. If you hate to have to think or ponder or even consider for a moment what anything means in a film--or in life--you're sure to really, really hate this deliberately annoying and confrontational film. But if you're anything like me and you don't mind being asked to contemplate the bizarre nature of our ever more devolving, collapsing society then you, too, should find this deeply unusual cinematic stunt to be quite worthwhile. It's not always fun or pleasant to watch, but it's extremely original and undeniably haunting. And it has some neat surprises from some very good supporting players, especially a superb Paul Giamatti as an especially ominous and unpleasant sort of Angel of Death.