New COSMOPOLIS Trailer Tries to Spin Gold From Straw

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I’m sold on Cosmopolis. Since the flick stole hearts across Europe and offended domestic sensibilities, it’s borne my stamp of approval. Even the negative reviews, accusing it of being a stifling exercise in dystopian nonsense, only made me feel bad for director David Cronenberg’s sake. The esteemed loon had been on a real hot run with his more conventional thrillers, Eastern Promises and A History of Violence.

If he’s gone off the reservation again with Cosmopolis, I’m riding with his war party. But the conventional box office? Maybe not so much. And so, in an effort to address the concerns of advanced critiques that the film lacks in a plot American brains can eat as easily as Red Vines, the Cosmpolis marketing corps has cobbled together a new trailer.

I don’t think it cuts the mustard. Sure, it’s glorious for my twisted sensibilities, but I don’t mind abstract film. But seen objectively, the new Cosmopolis trailer looks like it’s straining itself to stretch a plot out of a lot of brilliant madness.

Sure, it has enough adrenaline rush in it to tickle your lizard brain. But give a click and tell me if a coherent story sinks into your cerebellum.

Did you piece together a plot from that? Maybe a premise, sure: Robert Pattinson is an information broker with a seamy side under his designer suit, and some unknown parties are trying to kill him while an anti-capitalist revolt is going on. It all makes him feel very alive.

Now if that were the entirety of Cosmopolis, Robert Pattinson and David Cronenberg would have nothing to worry about. But DeLillo’s work – and Cronenberg’s portrayal of it – clearly goes real deep. The glimpses of dialogue and action we get are downright odd – either high-minded or brutal in a bizarre way.

So this scans to me like the Cosmopolis teaser video team forced together a plot from a hodgepodge of weirdness. The lines are philosophical or oblique, the attitude is depraved and the lack of any direction or exposition suggests the film is more about a mysterious meaning than an actual “who done it” mystery the audience can solve.

Again, nothing wrong with that, Cosmopolis. Robert Pattinson can carom around an apocalyptic New York with a head full of bad ideas and a mouth full of nihilism, and I’d buy what Cronenberg’s selling – at least enough to the pay ticket price. Still, it suggests that the film may be too much a work of modern art than mainstream America can happily digest.