Restraint

Rating: Null/10 (20 July 2000)

American Psycho is Mary Harron's restrained directorial adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's novel about 1980s excess, seen through the eyes of a yuppie serial killer. Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) works on Wall Street, but he's so bland in appearance that his fiancee (Reese Witherspoon) calls him the "boy next door" and most of his colleagues continually mistake him for someone else. Bateman is rich enough not to work, and receives an exorbitant salary for doing very little. His devoted secretary (Chloe Sevigny) is kept busy booking lunch and dinner reservations for him and his fiancee, mistress (Samantha Mathis) or misogynist buddies at the trendiest restaurants. Always dressed in designer clothing, he spends the rest of the time at his health and fitness club or at the laundrette - trying to get the bloodstains off his sheets.
American Psycho is about Bateman's psychopathic urges spiralling out of control, but the clever screenplay (by Harron and Guinevere Turner) makes it clear he doesn't kill indiscriminately. Bateman is a metaphor for privileged male elites raping and murdering America's homeless, gays, non-whites and women. Harron's film is a lot more audience-friendly than Ellis's book. Christian Bale introduces some welcome goofy mannerisms to his characterisation of the title role. And most of the violence is toned down or takes place out of shot. But Harron is too genteel with her direction; unwilling to have much fun satirising 1980s America. The expensive apartments and restaurants don't look glamorous, they look washed-out. Was this deliberate or a lack of money? More significantly, the dialogue often feels truncated (it doesn't get a chance to flow), so the film isn't as funny as the book. In its favour, it builds to more of a crescendo than the book, and you're not left wondering what the point of it all was.