It was a shitty movie.
Felt like a smashing together of "Taxi Driver" and "The King of Comedy" -- very derivative. Slow first act, pretty boring overall. Basically functions as a character sketch with only one fleshed out character, and that character is primarily to be understood as a product of sociological conditions with limited personal agency. The setting lacked verisimilitude and that gritty, late 70s/early 80s crime-ridden New York vibe is really played out.
If the film is supposed to play with the interplay of, or boundaries between, comedy and tragedy then it isn't funny or absurd enough on the one hand, or poignant or affecting enough on the other. If the film is supposed to suggest that Fleck is the only sane man in an insane society then we aren't shown what particularly about him is counterintuitively sane -- he is delusional, mistaken about his own past, and largely pushed along by accidents and outside forces. Either of these films, or the unreliable narrator aspect of the plotting, could have been developed into something interesting. But instead they feel more like themes that are alluded but not committed to.
