Cosmopolis

David Cronenberg’s chilling thriller in which a young billionaire’s insular world collapses during a limo ride across Manhattan, with Robert Pattinson

Twenty-eight-year-old self-made billionaire Eric Packer sets out across Manhattan to get a haircut from his long-standing barber. His journey becomes perilous when an anti-capitalist protest and a visit from the US president bring the city to a standstill. As Eric meets business and personal acquaintances inside the cocoon of his limousine, the systems that sustain his life begin to collapse.

Cronenberg’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel is cold, precise, and unsettling. Initially met with mixed reviews – perhaps partly due to the casting of Pattinson – the film has since emerged from the Twilight shadow as an increasingly prescient portrait of privileged masculinity, sealed off behind glass from the social, economic, and ecological horrors it has helped to create. In an era of political paralysis, and elite insulation, Cosmopolis’s satire feels more relevant than ever.