In a scene in David Cronenberg's adaptation of Don DeLillo's novella, as Robert Pattinson grimaces while having a proctological exam, you realize that throughout the whole movie he's been acting like he has a finger up his butt. It's appropriate. Pattinson plays master of the universe Eric Packer, who unlike billionaires such as Bruce Wayne or Patrick Bateman, is more the passive type. He looks out the window of his limo, gazes at a computer screen, and mumbles Mametish non-sequiturs. En route uptown to get a haircut, he chats with his wife, has affectless sex, ignores demonstrators swinging dead rats, loses a fortune, and shrugs off a threat of assassination. Will he get his hair cut? A Pollock-esque painting backs the film's opening credits, and it ends with a Rothko canvas, suggesting that Cronenberg aspires to similar abstraction. Unlike those masters, however, he isn't looking into the enigma of the soul, but reiterating the banality of its absence.
