Cosmopolis (2012)

Critic Reviews

• Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine

  [A] vapid, claustrophobic drama...

• Peter Howell, Toronto Star

  What we can't argue is that Cosmopolis is the work of a master filmmaker, one who is determined to have us think about the ideas packed into the trunk of this limo bound for the furthest corners of the psyche.

• Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter

  An airless and inert expression of a capitalist kingpin's odyssey across a threatening New York City.

• Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

  A parade of hollow didactic encounters.

• Kimberly Gadette, Doddle

  A polemic rather than a film. Why Cronenberg thought this DeLillo novel would make a compelling film is so confounding, perhaps only derivative traders could come up with an answer. Maybe.

• Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph

  Its portrayal of civilisation as an impossibly intricate, crucially flawed equation, about to buckle and snap, is sinuously compelling.

• Xan Brooks, Guardian [UK]

  Cosmopolis, praise be, is flat-out marvellous, a 21st-century American horror story, haunted by "the glow of cyber-capitalism".

• Simon Gallagher, Film School Rejects

  Yes Cosmopolis bears a striking gloss, and is shot basically well, but it is way too showy without the necessary substance, and as a result feels fatally hollow.

• Damon Wise, Empire Magazine

  It goes without saying that it is weird, but even from the director of eXistenZ and Videodrome it is bizarre, with the mannered, affected performances of the former and the outsider characters of the latter.

• Guy Lodge, HitFix

  Hinky, kinky, defiantly unlovable "Cosmopolis" lands in our laps with bristly self-assurance. "You asked for this," it seems to be saying, one of the few things unspoken amid its torrent of thematically pointed verbiage. "Let's see if you really want it."

• Lee Marshall, Screen International

  [Cronenberg's] dependence on DeLillo's source material means that the director is not entirely his own man, and the atmosphere of impending catastrophe that builds in the course of the film is constantly undermined by its bookish lines and set-ups.

• David Jenkins, Little White Lies

  Beyond its withering critique of contemporary capitalism, Cosmopolis is also fascinated by that ongoing Cronenbergian concern: the limitations and mutations of the human body.

• Dave Calhoun, Time Out

  Threatens to soar and to be important, but it only offers flashes of lucidity. That said, there's a consistent air of charged, end-of-days menace running through the film, which Cronenberg handles with an unbroken sense of precision and confidence.

• Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]

  [An] agonisingly self-conscious and meagre piece of work.

Read all 14 critic reviews