“Megalopolis” Is a Mega Mess

Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola, 2024) 1½ out of 5 stars

Francis Ford Coppola, the celebrated auteur who made his name in the 1970s with such Hollywood New Wave classics as The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now, is out with a new movie, Megalopolis, which he wrote as well as directed. A visually ambitious modern parable about the corrupting perils of greed and enticing promise of utopia, the film follows the competing forces within a modern city’s power structure, all of it set to the tune of the Roman Empire. Unfortunately, while there are occasional passages of mild interest, the work as a whole suffers from painfully obvious metaphors, confused plot points, and uneven performances. Megalopolis is a mega mess.

Adam Driver (Annette) stars as Cesar Catalina, head of the Design Authority (Robert Moses, anyone?) for the great metropolis of New Rome. His plans for a major rethinking of the city’s parks and urban spaces runs counter to the vision of Mary Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito, Abigail). While the two men duel over who gets to control the future, Cicero’s daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel, The Fate of the Furious), parties on. Until, that is, she sees something that gives her purpose.

Cesar, it seems, can stop time. In an admittedly striking opening sequence, while standing on the rim of the Chrysler Building (yes, this is New Rome, but it’s really New York), he arrests his own tumble through the air with a verbal command. Traffic comes to a halt, along with everything else. When he pulls this trick again, later, for some reason Julia, sitting in the Police Commissioner’s car, is herself not frozen. From that point on, Cesar fascinates here, and before long that attraction will be mutual, to the horror of her father.

Why does Cesar have this power, though, which he only uses a few times throughout the movie? And why does Julia remain unfrozen? Coppola neglects to make it meaningful. It’s just one of the many loose threads that never amount to anything.

There’s also Laurence Fishburne’s turn as narrator, reading the title cards, printed in Roman font, that speak of the end of empire. He plays Cesar’s righthand man and chauffeur, too. Fishburne (All the Old Knives)—who got his start in films thanks to Coppola, via Apocalypse Now—certainly has a commanding presence. But his role here serves to merely underscore (and underscore and underscore again) the self-evident analogies with which Coppola fills the movie.

At least Fishburne’s part does not embarrass him. Other actors fare less well, among them Shia LaBeouf (Pieces of a Woman), Aubrey Plaza (Emily the Criminal), Talia Shire (Con Man), and Jon Voight (Ray Donovan: The Movie), all of whom are over the top, and not in a way that lends significance to the narrative. Unless, that is, beating the audience over the head with an allegory is worthy of attention.

Given how much damage real-life figures like Moses did to the little people who stood in their way, Cesar is an odd choice for a protagonist whose ideas emerge triumphant to the denizens of New Rome. Not to mention that in the original Rome, Julius Caesar ended the republic. What are we supposed to make of Coppola’s hodgepodge here? I’m not sure even he knows. No one’s motivations make a lick of sense. The story, such as it is, would have been considerably more engaging without the forced Roman subtext; excuse me, surface text.

At one point during the press screening I attended, a hired performer stood up in the front of the theater to pretend to be a reporter interacting with Cesar on screen. This is symbolic of the picture’s failings: all flash and no substance. It added absolutely nothing to the experience. Given the stories of Coppola’s sexually predatory behavior on set, perhaps that should have given us ample warning of a rotting core. Perhaps we should just stop time and go back to before Megalopolis was made.

Christopher Llewellyn Reed

Christopher Llewellyn Reed is a film critic, filmmaker, and educator, as well as Film Festival Today's Editor. A member of both the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, Chris is, in addition, lead film critic at Hammer to Nail and the author of Film Editing: Theory and Practice.