Fight Club (1999)-"R"

Run Time:139 minutes

4 stars out of 4

David Fincher, director of Se7en (1995) and The Game (1997), has yet again made a fascinating film. Fight Club, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, is brutal, easily offensive (i.e. the porn in the kiddy movie), very detailed, and mind-boggling at the end. Our nameless narrator (Edward Norton) is an insomniac who hates his job and focuses his energy into organization and acquisition of "Ikea-style" furniture. He starts going to self-help groups of every kind so that he can get his emotions out and actually sleep. Just as things are beginning to look up for our narrator, a rude and semi-suicidal woman, Marla Singer (Helena Bonham), ruins his self-help groups, and his apartment explodes, leaving him no place to live. He moves in with Tyler Durdan (Brad Pitt), a crazy anarchist with the only house in an industrial warehouse district of town. Durdan corrupts our narrator, but in a good way, helping him let go and "let all that is unimportant truly slide" in his life. The two start an underground fight club, where bare-chested men viciously beat each other, but all in good spirits. Durdan begins to take over the narrator's life and starts an anti-society terrorist group operating for Project Mayhem. Saying any more would give up the truly fascinating ending, so I will stop the plot summary there. Fincher's attention to detail is a really interesting, and the whole Durdan character is incredibly interesting, he's just like the little cartoon devil that sits on an indecisive person's shoulder. The plot is interesting, the characters fascinating, and the detail extraordinary. Pay attention to the details in this film! If something seems strange, remember it, it will make sense at the end! This is one of those movies that you can gain immeasurable insight on if you watch it twice, and I highly recommend that you do that. Running on a truly original script, adrenaline, and the sheer testosterone of seeing a bunch of guys beat eachother up, Fight Club is definitely one of the best films of 1999.