Never seen so many people walk out!

Funny you should mention Drive, I just watched the DVD a couple of nights ago. I had no desire to see it when it came out, I wasn't impressed by the trailer, but I ended up loving the movie. It's an excellent contrast to Cosmopolis though, because it had so little dialog. I read an interview where Gosling said the dialog was so bad, he literally ripped pages out of the script and refuse to say it. He and Carey Mulligan agreed that their scenes were better in silence. I can't argue with him on that point, I found the whole movie to be powerful, and I'm not a Gosling fan. But I enjoyed the direction, and overall, it seemed like a stripped down version of True Romance, another film I like.

Cronenberg has said that Cosmopolis isn't for everyone, and as they were going into the screening at Cannnes he warned Pattinson that there would probably be boos. It got a standing ovation that lasted over 8 minutes, the longest of any film at the festival this year.
.

If you are prepared, I mean knowing that this is a talky movie with stylized dialogues that you won't get all of them from the first watch and that it deliberately can give the audience a disconnect feeling, you will at least appreciate the movie. The mood changes in the second half, it becomes more dark.
I haven't seen Drive, but I loved Cosmopolis and its tragic lead Eric Packer.
Please come back and give your opinion, once you've seen it

With all respect but honestly, I don't get why so many people walked out and others stopped looking.
First I wouldn't walk out just for not disturbing the audience.
Second the only reason I'd stop watching a movie would be because I would find it dumb. A lot of movies, when I see them on TV, have a very poor plot with very dumb jokes and poor performances.
This is not the case with Cosmopolis, just the opposite. I can understand people not getting the movie from a first watch, but I would continue to try, especially when, after a while, you can feel that Eric's life is going to change drastically.
You don't have to be intellectual to understand that things, occured and/or said in the movie, just take place at this moment in our society.
I've read in an interview with David Cronenberg that he had met someone who has to deal with the 1% and that man was stunned with the similarities he had noticed in Eric Packer's character.
The dialogues are special, that's true but there's no verbal diarrhea IMHO. There are a lot of dialogues but what with The Social Network? This movie was full of dialogues, never heard a complain.
My daughter who's young (18) has loved the movie. Her only remark was that she would like to see it one more time for a better understanding of the meanings of the dialogues as she felt that there was a lot to think about.

The writer misseed the entire world of high finance , fact is far better than fiction . There is an entire world of global finance thats evolved out there and a cadre of young & not so young international traders that participate without emphasis on any special national allegiances or financial home base . They aren't rogue traders but in effect a new evolved breed of of trader/financier that has come about in the globalizing world . Men of power to some extent not as wealth creating as a Steve Jobs or Bill gates or the Gnome of Iowa .

This is fascinating stuff & very real, these fellows that can control the supply & cost of wheat to entire countries like Egypt for instance thru buying futures, storing & stockpiling the grain & s holding it seasonally artificially setting prices for personal gains . But wealth & money manifests across a huge playing field of financial economic universe of stocks, bonds, real estate, commoditties , arms & weapons , loans & insurance & insurance for the insuranceon the loans . You can make money betting stocks will go up & also take the short side making money when the market falls . Oil , gold, silver , platinum to fertilizers without which people don't eat & animals too for that matter.

Hollywood should be having a field day with this but lacks the cajones to do so and the writers these days are just that weak & insipid rather cashing in on Comicon , Vampire & Transformer 12yrold demographics. Wall Street, Trading Places, the Devil's Advocate and now lets go further than this . Its not just Wall Street any longer , there's Hong Kong , Dubai , London, Zurich, Bankok,Beijing, Moscow , etc etc.



"Want to know how to make God Laugh? Tell Her your plans...."

Well, I can imagine these reactions coming from people who went to see the film unprepared. It is a love it/hate it movie.
What disappoints me a bit is that I've just read some excellent reviews from Australian journalists who've written almost an essay about the plot and the meanings of both DeLillo's novel and Cronenberg's film adaptation. I appreciate their POV's very much and I guess that, if people should've read these reviews, they would've been more able to consider if they would give the movie a try or not.

This plot is difficult to follow and needs in fact a second view or some research on the net. It was the intention that people shouldn't feel a connection with the characters. The whole movie is filmed in a cold, detached way just as it had to be. Though, if you were willing to go for it, you'd see how the character Eric Packer becomes more and more human and vulnerable towards the ending.
No repeating of convo's though, every line had its meaning, many in fact were quotes with more meaning than just the line itself.
The fact that David has written the script in 6 days is because he has copied the stylized dialogues literally from DeLillo's novel. That's why. You may not like the plot but don't insult Cronenberg's intelligence

What I don't understand well either is people laughing towards the ending. Really? The final scene is to laugh with?
I guess Australia doesn't suffer from the financial and economic crisis as Europe does since a few years. The whole movie but especially its ending gave me goosebumps at while because of the reality we have to endure at the moment.

Again, thumbs up for some of your reviewers. They were much more intelligent and insightful than the 'pseudo'intellectual critics of my country.

The premise was there, but it got lost with the talking and lack of music. I overheard some people after the film say "I can handle a bad film that has a plot, but I just could not follow this plot".

This film might have been better if I felt some sort of connection with the characters, but they had no emotions or social skills - they were just robots. Half the time the conversations were just them repeating what the other person said back to them. Or just pure babble that I think was suppose to come off as some sort of meaningful dialogue

Funny how most of the critics are loving it. Where I'm from, people who pay $12 to see a film don't walk out, they stick it out til the end. I don't think I've ever been at a movie where anyone walked out unless they had a crying baby.
.