Manodrome Review: Eisenberg Is Excellent In Impactful But Fatally Flawed Movie

It might seem unfair to measure Manodrome against generation-defining explorations of masculine rage like Taxi Driver and Fight Club, but this movie seems to invoke them. Its protagonist is a driver, but for Uber; he joins a cultish, all-male club, but they do more chanting and shopping than mayhem. The list of concepts touched upon as he spirals downward is long enough to understand that writer-director John Trengove aims to speak to our moment as those movies did to theirs, but his work is ultimately defined by something it doesn’t carry over — voiceover narration. Manodrome lacks depth as either social commentary or character study, in large part because of how it positions us in relation to its protagonist’s perspective. Though we are tied to his experience, this closeness doesn’t come with the same flirtation with complicity at the core of both those touchstones, resulting in a movie that, while admittedly mood-altering, is relatively toothless.