Fight Club Review
by "Steve Rhodes" (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)October 10th, 1999
FIGHT CLUB
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1999 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): *** 1/2
Featuring an acting tours de force by Edward Norton and Brad Pitt, FIGHT CLUB, the much anticipated film by director David Fincher (SEVEN), proves worthy of its hype. Although not for everyone due to its pervasive strong violence, the mesmerizing film shocks, delights and surprises the viewers at every turn.
Based on Chuck Palahniuk's novel, the brightly written script by Jim Uhls literally bursts with memorable lines that will have you laughing and thinking. The story, which makes Kafka look like an optimist, concerns an underground chain of fight clubs. The parallels to Nazi Germany and the brown shirts are obvious.
When we meet Jack (Norton, who is also the narrator), he's an insomniac trying to find something to do with his life. "I flipped though catalogs and wondered what kind of dining set defines me as a person," he tells us. With the help of a plethora of mail order catalogs, he is able to fully define himself in terms of all of his material
possessions.
In easily the funniest sequence in the movie, Jack seeks meaning though self-help groups. He goes to ones for various forms of cancer, among others. No one questions whether he should be there. "Every evening I died, and every evening I was born again," he says of the effect on him of the motivational speakers at the meetings. "When people think you're dying, they really, really listen to you," he explains as one of his reasons for regular attendance.
Upsetting his world is an interloper named Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), who crashes his meetings. She goes for the free food, not the sympathy, but it spoils it for him once she shows up.
His life really changes when he meets a soap salesman named Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). Tyler, a free-spirit, a modern urban terrorist and a seductive conman, is such a memorable character that you may never again be able to meet someone named Tyler without thinking of Tyler Durden.
Norton and Pitt are perfectly cast. Norton, a brilliant acting chameleon, becomes a canonical office worker who is bored stiff with his job and his life. Pitt, born to be a rebel, plays a character with the inverse of Jack's traits.
"This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time," the philosophical Tyler tells Jack. Ridiculing Jack's possession obsession, Tyler lectures him, "The things you own end up owning you." The movie repeats this message so often that you almost expect an endorsement on the marquee from Anarchist International.
The fight club from which the movie gets its name starts off innocently enough. Like a couple of kids on the playground, Tyler wants to trade licks with Jack outside of a bar.
This rapidly gets out of hand. They start meeting regularly, attracting other members who want to get pounded. Jack starts showing up at work with massive bruises and cuts as if he were getting into a series of progressively worse car accidents.
The movie takes one surprising twist and turn after another. One of the wildest episodes has Jack and Tyler raiding a liposuction clinic.
Filled with sadomasochistic desires, the guys are soon looking for more pain than the traditional fight club can provide. Be prepared to look at the floor a lot during some of the movie's gory scenes. "It's only after we have lost everything that we're free to do everything," Tyler explains as his credo to justify his savagery.
Filled with Nihilist humor, the film is vicious and viciously funny. "On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero," Tyler points out to justify his random acts of cruelty.
(In a bit of life reflecting art, I left the big city screening room in which I saw the movie and went to use a payphone on the street. An angry, tough-looking guy threatened to beat the crap -- he used another term -- out of me for using "his" payphone. I said I was sorry. Tyler would not have approved.)
After seeming to have run out of ideas, the film's ending turns out instead to be its creative high point. It's the sort of film that will leave you exhausted but glad you came.
FIGHT CLUB runs way too long at 2:20. It is rated R for disturbing and graphic depiction of violent anti-social behavior, sexuality and language. It should have been rated NC-17 and is not appropriate for teenagers unless they are older and can handle extremely horrific images.
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