Originally written January 15, 2013

Following is a movie that will be most well known for being the first movie that a certain now-famous director made, Christopher Nolan. Most people now know him for his most recent movies, like Inception and of course his Batman trilogy. But as far as his earlier movies go, I’ve only really heard people mention his second film, Memento, which was fantastic. Following was a good start for Nolan, but after seeing some of his subsequent films this one seems a bit underwhelming.

The movie has an interesting enough plot, however. We follow an unnamed man, who tells the story of something he was fascinated with doing…following people. His rules were always for it to be someone random, and to stop following them once he found out something like where they live or work. But until then, he just liked to follow someone around, and see what they do with their life. One day, he winds up following a man who notices he’s being followed and confronts the man. This guy turns out to be a thief, who decides to take the young man under his wing and show him how he works.

The plot moves in a few different directions, but it’s interesting because I wasn’t really sure what was going to happen next, and there were some nice twists. One thing I didn’t like about it though, is the structure of it, because it’s not presented in chronological order. This was fine in a movie like Memento, which kept moving backwards, but here it’s just kind of scattered and feels a bit messy at times. The main character isn’t as interesting as the thief, Cobb, is. Other than that, the movie is still pretty good. What was interesting was seeing how Christopher Nolan made a movie without a big budget or much of anything. Nowadays it’s obvious the guy can make some great blockbusters, but for his debut film here he didn’t have much to work with, yet he still made it work. This definitely isn’t the best Nolan movie to recommend, but that’s only because his other movies are so great, not because this is a bad movie. I still recommend it.

3.5/5