A very good movie

Since I'm a huge fan of Christopher Nolan's work, I was definitely eager to check his directing debut. Nolan has become one of the most successful and popular mainstream directors but the reactions towards his movies are quite extreme nowadays. Indeed, on one hand, you have his die-hard fans (I'm a fan but not so devoted) who push all his movies on the top of such lists like the Imdb top 250 or 'Listal's 100 Films To See Before You Die' but, on the other hand, more and more people are getting rather annoyed with this fanatism and think he is actually rather overrated. Anyway, 15 years ago, he made this very impressive directing debut which was barely seen when it was released but he sure got noticed. Apparently, like some other notable directors before him like David Lynch or Kevin Smith, he made this flick on a micro-budget with non-professional actors. The shooting of this film took over a year and because all the cast and crew members had other full-time jobs, they were only able to film on Saturdays about 15 minutes of footage until photography had been completed. Personally, I thought it was a rather fascinating plot, about a regular guy obsessively following some strangers. The directing was also pretty solid and the only real weakness would be the acting which was not really impressive but, back then, Nolan didn't have at his disposal such actors like Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Al Pacino or Morgan Freeman. To conclude, I think it is a very good directing debut and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Christopher Nolan's work.

8/10