An unsympathetic, almost alien One Percenter sits in a soundproof limo being driven across town to get a haircut. That's the plot, but this is a Cronenberg film, so you know it's not going to be just that.

Cosmopolis is a delightful mess which takes more than a few minutes to really get involved with. Everyone talks like they're the Architect from The Matrix Reloaded, which makes it a bit laughable, and people are coming and going, almost everyone only getting one scene in or outside the limo. The world is crumbling around Pattinson, people are tossing rats and probing his prostate and it doesn't seem to matter and he doesn't really care. He's cartoonishly disconnected from reality and has to literally ask how real people talk.

It feels a bit like Scorsese's After Hours, but it never gets truly madcap or intertwines or spirals out of control. It just gets a little bit more sinister and unpredictable. I'm not always entirely sure if I am grasping what anyone is talking about, if its all just pretentious garbage or if the point of the scene is that it is pretentious garbage, but it's still interesting pretentious garbage, full of non-sequitors and ponderings that are a bit off the beaten path from the usual attempts to take a stab at life/universe/everything. Instead we see stuff like Matthieu Almaric wax on the glories of cream pies, a horrible hair cut while people talk about their cabs, Juliette Binoche writhing on the floor...

...and possibly the best scene of the year, an extended scene where Paul Giamatti and Robert Pattinson duel with true menace. I wanted this scene to never end.

All of this may not sound like a lot of fun. No matter how many or few people are in your theater, you will see walkouts. It's not that this is particularly deep or challenging or at all falsely advertised, it's just one of those things you have a limited amount of time to decide if you're on board with or not in order to appreciate the rest. If you dig this cast, and you dig the Cronenberg films of yesteryear, you better make time for this.

PS - one of the delights of being at the premiere of this, other than the Q&A, is that the crowd was full of Twi-hards who came only to see Robert Pattinson in person and had waited overnight to be close to him. I take great delight knowing these people had to sit through a film like this. If they loved it, great. If it was punishment for their ignorance, even better.