Damn, that's a lot of shit to unpack in this film and it will surely merit a couple of revisits. For now i'm just gonna say: I haven't seen such a pathetic, casually disgusting and evil antihero character for a while, a blank slate as far as empathy and responsibility are concerned and a bitter satire of a clichéd, shallow millenial male, basically encompassing all the worst aspects of an entitled chauvinistic douchebag in complete denial of the fact that his actions and lifestyle choices aren't gonna get a pass in a post-metoo world, the qanon-style conspiracy nut writing himself as the main character at the center of a conspiracy he's been chosen by higher powers to untangle, and the consumerism-obsessed instagram narcissist pretending to be rich and famous, always chasing the glitzy luxury lifestyle staged by the whole reality-defying influencer bubble of pure fakery. Whenever he's forced to reflect on the lack of meaning and purpose to his whole petty existence, he gets violent. If anything doesn't go his way, someone else is to blame.

It's kinda sad that nowadays so many folks actually getting paid a salary for doing film criticism seem completely unable to catch all these hints, themes and messages even if the movie were to hit them over the head with those. As if decades of shallow-as-fuck good-versus-evil narratives endlessly recycled into blunt action blockbuster fare had robbed them of the ability to connect the dots and realize that "sexist dumb angry protagonist" does not equal "sexist dumb angry movie". How much more explicit do things have to get spelled out for them to notice this is not a fucking Michael Bay flick actually asking us to relate to its dickhead protagonist? Also, they're reviewing a freaking noir flick. Do they have any awareness of the genre's history of intentionally flawed heroes and ambiguous morality? I feel like so much of that important nuance has been lost to cultural criticism as a whole.

That said, the film is not without its flaws. As you might've already guessed from what i said before, at times it bites off a bit more than it can chew and the numerous interwoven themes and subtexts can become a bit of a muddled mess. The visuals aren't always able to actually live up to the warped reality our utterly unreliable narrator inhabits. Also, it often struggles to find a solid balance between the convoluted plot progression on one hand and the hazy dream-logic (dis-)continuity on the other - had it settled for either of those it would feel a lot more coherent. These are nitpicks though. This has been a wild ride and i enjoyed every second of it.