Following

Christopher Nolan, whom I'm sure you all know as the director of the new Batman trilogy and Inception, has a very interesting film that was his directorial debut called, Following. This film is a neo-noir crime film that is somewhat edging on a psychological thriller. Unlike most psychological thrillers, this film has nothing to do with serial killers or the occult, however, revealing what makes this film that way would give away crucial spoilers. Following centers around a writer who decides to follow people for "no reason" as he states in the beginning, but then it develops into researching people for characters, and then eventually into something much more sinister. For those who have seen Nolan's later films, this one in particular features no actors that have been featured in any of his other films and are generally unheard of. Nolan follows a Tarantino-esque style of story telling where certain integrals of the plot are shown ahead of time or out of order, maintaining an extra sense of mystery to the film. Back to the acting, in my opinion, this is where the film falls flat. The majority of the characters in the movie are actually not very interesting, they act very typically for noir film characters and they don't do much to push the boundaries of what characters in this type of film could be. Occasionally, scenes also feel like they are drawn out for far too long and the lack of music in the majority of the film makes the scenes feel even longer. The incredibly minimalistic score for this film actually hurts this movie unlike Requiem for a Dream, which I last reviewed. While the film is quite short, a meager 70 minutes, it feels like it was approximately 2 hours due to the general uninterest I had developed about halfway through the movie. The plot development is actually quite interesting though and that's why this film borders on multiple genres. Overall, Following is a decent film but falls flat in some key categories. This film is currently available for streaming on Netflix.

Bottom Line: Rent It/Stream It

Score: 7/10

Year: 1999
Director: Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight Rises, Inception, Memento, Insomnia
Cast: Jeremy Theobald, Alex Haw, Lucy Russell
Rating: R