Review of Following (1999) by Fredy A — 26 Nov 2009

Audiences normally prefer leadings men with attitude and confidence. Take Chilli Palmer, Clint Eastwood or John McClane. They see and idolize them because that's the person they would like to be. They watch the movie as a mean of escaping their world, maybe pretending to be Dirty Harry for a while.

Sometimes these characters are presented are heroes, where they are comfortable to watch, but when they are really frightening are when they are villains. There is a character like that in Following, Cobb, a criminal who breaks into people's houses to shatter their privacy.

And he is the only character who wins anything in the story with an evil plan that makes up the end of the movie. But it is not him that we have come to see. Because there is another character that people like in a movie.

The ordinary guy. And they feel at home with him on the screen because they can identify with him. And while not everyone is a burglar or a poor writer, we all have tried to be the cool guy, the funny guy, the clever guy, the womanizer guy.

And while some may succeed and some may fail, its is always nice to see someone, maybe someone that looks like us, in another dimension, because that role will exist forever, probably longer than the confident cop.