Fight Club (1999)

Fight Club (R) - Review

 "I am Jack's grinning pleasure center"

 Chuck Palahniuk's anarchistic realworld prose, David Fincher's exacting hand on the aesthetics, Brad Pitt and Edward Norton's mutually bipolar appeal and a revolutionary male-centric message filmed using still state of the art visual effects, story telling, electronic music and dynamite sound effects, Fight Club is THE penultimate movie to define the 90s (and subsequent decades') corporate culture, consumerism and politically correct male-bashing (literally)! It documents the breaking point of the American Male's psyche, an image so warped by its own repressed masculinity that's so crammed into pinching DKNY dress shoes 40 hours a week that anarchy might be a viable option.

Everyman Jack (Norton) has a boring job that allows him to travel, shops the Ikea catalogue while on the can, has no personal relationships beyond those with his boss and couch, and can't sleep.  Jack has insomnia, which he seeks to cure by attending support groups in church basements, a tourist in cancer-town.  His new found serenity is broken when Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) shows up and muscles in on his scene.  When his condo is detonated while away, Jack calls newfound single serving friend Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) for a ride and ends up staying with him in a dilapidated house indefinitely.  They forge a friendship (and an underground homoerotic-tinged boxing club) that soon blossoms into a antisocial cult that spirals out Jack's control, as does his love triangle with Tyler and Marla, and his own self identity.

David Fincher's anti-movie is the perfect translation of Chuck's book; like the chiseled bodies of its stars the story has been trimmed of all the fat, gone is the cookie dough confusion and fizzled twist reveal of the novel.  Cut down to effective fighting weight, Fight Club rages off the screen with bloody knuckled repartee intact.  Norton and Pitt's bromance is used to great effect, obfuscating a heavily anti-corporate message (heavily accented by a young post-advertising career Fincher) that even Jack blanches at in the end.  Special effects used effectively to progress a mood or joke or style (unlike 1999s previously released sfx laden letdown Star Wars Episode I, ironically where Fight Club first advertised to the masses) and electronic soundscape of the Dust Brothers banging the surround stereo track, Club is a 15 course banquet dinner (without the soiled clam chowder).

10 Gallons of Nitro Glycerine out of 10 (OUTSTANDING)