Fight Club ---- ***** (out of 5) (1999)
Cast: Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf, Jared Leto
Director(s): David Fincher
Screenwriter(s): Jim Uhls
Released on: October 15, 1999
Reviewed on: July 29, 2005
Rated: R - for intense brutal violence, profanity, and sex
FIGHT CLUB is an envelope-pushing film, at the very least. It tests its viewers to question the basic moral fabric of society and possibly even distort their own opinions on what is right and wrong. It possesses a lot of strong claims and, thankfully, a cast of equally strong actors to bring forth these ideas with powerful conviction. Even if the underlying secret might go miles beyond what the title suggests, it only further proves that FIGHT CLUB knows no limits to its genre-bending potential.
In a role that forces him to change his personality somewhat in just about every situation, Edward Norton pulls it off brilliantly as our anonymous narrator, who we later discover is named Jack. He is an insomniac working for a nameless automobile manufacturer. After a suggestion by his doctor to visit the hospital and meet the men with testicular cancer, he finds that the therapy of crying with victims who don't even realize that he isn't sick helps him to get the sleep he needs. However, after several months, he develops a full-fledged addiction to these support group meetings and begins attending them three to four times a week. However, as a woman named Marla Singer walks into the picture, Jack simply states that "she ruined everything." He quickly realizes that she is merely a faker as well, and with her presence, he is unable to cry and his insomnia returns as a result. However, things change for our protagonist as he meets an interesting individual on an airplane named Tyler Durden. Jack becomes fascinated with Tyler, merely for his intriguing but frightening bits of information (such as how to concoct napalm) and his questionable views on morals. Tyler claims that he is a soap salesman, but later on, his other professions make it very clear that he entertains himself by making life difficult for his employers and gets some sort of anarchistic thrill out of screwing things up.
One day, Jack's apartment explodes either by arson or some accident, so he moves in with Tyler in a shoddy apartment in the ghetto. Together, they develop an underground, well-hidden form of therapy called Fight Club. They recruit members and state the rules, and the most important rule is never to discuss it anywhere outside of the organization. The knowledge behind Fight Club is that by having bare-skin brawls with the other male participants, the fighters themselves will feel mentally and emotionally gratified by the end of the night. As the weeks wear on, Jack becomes less and less reliable at his job and rudely aggressive in any social situation because of Tyler's influences on him. Suddenly, Tyler begins much stranger experiments with making nitroglycerin and starts to push Jack out of the picture to make way for bigger plans. That's when things spiral completely out of control. I'll stop there, for your benefit.
FIGHT CLUB was nothing at all like I'd expected it to be, since I was a tad too judgmental after hearing about it, assuming that it was just another violent Hollywood movie. To this day, that's what many disappointed viewers will label it as, but they've obviously missed the point behind all of the gratuitous brutality. The fight scenes are graphic, because it helps illustrate the film's theme of anti-violence and aids us in acknowledging the fact that all of the club's members are obviously mislead and socially flawed because they find so much joy and entertainment value in severely injuring one another. And though it's true that each person in the film has issues, because of Tyler's beliefs and undeniably strong claims, we actually believe his theories for the majority of FIGHT CLUB's length, however demented and ludicrous they may be. This really helped me regard the talents of the thespians in this film. Brad Pitt's driven nihilism is very convincing, but I found myself more attached to Edward Norton's character. His portrayal of an angry and emotionally-confused Jack won me over, and I could relate to him more often than anybody else.
I'm quite positive that the revelation that is thrust upon us towards the end of the film will be the most talked-about aspect of FIGHT CLUB. It's one of those mind-warping concepts that totally changes everything previously seen and causes the events in the film to do an about-face. The writing is also very well-done, making the revelation more of a sequence rather than a sudden jolting scene, because the idea is subtly and gradually brought into our minds to make it easier to swallow. I'm sure many will finish watching FIGHT CLUB and feel extremely baffled, but the surprise ending does tie all of the loose ends together and help things to make much more sense. FIGHT CLUB can be an intense and unnerving experience if you're not sure what to expect, but the film is strong enough with its ideas that, even if you removed all of the themes of financial anarchy that we see towards the end, it would still be good.
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