Rating of
3.5/4
Money Shmoney
MikeInMotion - wrote on 02/22/12
How do you make an engrossing crime drama with just a $6,000 budget? You can’t, but Christopher Nolan can. Nolan was the director, writer, photographer, editor and producer for this film, which came out in 1998. This was his first feature film, made before anybody knew what Memento was and LONG before anybody knew what The Dark Knight was. Christopher Nolan was just getting his feet wet, but he shows here that he was a force to be reckoned with. Nolan has a fantastic imagination, one that he has used to make some magnificent films, and Following is no exception to the rule.
Following is about an unemployed writer (simply credited as The Young Man) who begins following around random strangers in the streets just to see where they go and what they do. As time passes he decides to start following specific people that interest him. He ends up following a man in a suit who confronts him and says that he is a serial burglar named Cobb (hey, that’s DiCaprio’s name in Inception). Cobb invites The Young Man to come with him as he robs houses, and The Young Man accepts the offer. However, we soon learn that Cobb and The Young Man’s meeting was not a coincidence, and that The Young Man is getting into a lot more than he bargained for.
It’s amazing that this film is as good as it is, because Christopher Nolan had VERY little to work with on such a small budget. It was filmed after Nolan got off of work from his day job, and was a project he completed almost entirely on his own. Even so, it all works very well. The actors do a very good job, the camera-work is surprisingly good, and the plot is fantastic and well-paced. This goes to show that it does not take a big budget to make a great film. As long as the plot is good and acting believable, budget doesn’t matter.
