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Review by Susan Granger
3½ stars out of 4
First rule of Fight Club: You do not talk about Fight
Club. So, right away, I'm in trouble with this bleak, profoundly
disturbing, testosterone-laden contemporary study of emasculation and
insanity. Edward Norton is the nameless narrator. He's a bored,
bitter, yuppie insomniac with no family or close friends. For company,
he joins cancer and other disease-support groups, while Brad Pitt is
Tyler Durden, a devious, charismatic anarchist who challenges him,
taunting "How much can you know about yourself if you've never been in
a fight?" He introduces Norton to the raw, animalistic instinct for
survival. When their bare-fist brawls outside a bar attract cheering
crowds, they create an underground network of secret, private clubs
where self-destructive, disillusioned professionals can seek solace
from despair by pummeling each other to smithereens. "This is your
life," Durden says, "and it's ending one day at a time." Soon Durden
becomes a subversive cult hero, a grungy messiah for the
sado-masochists of an emotionally-dead generation suffering from the
onslaught of consumerism and technology. And Helena Bonham Carter is
the funny, foul-mouthed, chain-smoking, self-help junkie who comes
between the two men. Adapted for the screen by Jim Uhls from Chuck
Palahniuk's gritty best-seller and directed by David Fincher
("Seven"), it's a fast-paced, stylized man's movie, exploring the
psychology of violence, complete with a sub-plot involving bath soap
made from human body fat from a liposuction clinic. Both Norton and
Pitt deliver knockout performances, relishing the wry, cruel nihilist
humor. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Fight Club" is an
insidious, cynical, savage 8. But it's socially irresponsible and
repellent in its graphic depictions of extreme violence and brutality.
Copyright © 2000 Susan Granger
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