The Undiagnosed Psychopaths

Rating: 9/10 (3 February 2013)

The modern fictional serial killer Patrick Bateman might easily have said..." They will look back with interest and say that I gave birth to the 21st century". This, of course, is a bastardization of the well known quote from real-life psycho Jack the Ripper. It is pertinent here because it was a brilliant concept of Novelist Ellis that the real blood-letters and psychopaths were not the usually profiled, although Patrick Bateman does say "I'm a child of divorce, give me a break".
But that is a doubtful creation of the empty, soulless materialism and "cremation of care" mindset that befits and thus spawned these greedy Wall Street monsters. Witness the recent financial meltdown. If that isn't a reality based on the metaphor of the Novel and the Film, then you just don't get it. But the American people got it in the form of taxpayer bailouts, unemployment and a sluggish economy.
The Movie is an artsy, slick, sombre, but "playful and mysterious dish" of dark humor, insanity, and the instability of the insatiable yuppie in-crowd. For these American Dream killers there is so much detachment that even the names of people that work closely together are interchanged and forgotten. It is to this point that our modern manifestation of "success" loses his grasp on reality and fails to know who or what is going on.
The last third is purposely ambiguous and for that it has a necessary unsettling and unresolved feel. A sense that...even our President can be delusional while appearing to be in command..."A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not." (Ronald Reagan in a National TV address).
The fact is that this is one great parable of a Movie that inaugurated the new Millennium with reflective and relevant prognosis.