Blacker than Black Humor

Rating: Null/10 (25 August 2001)

I'll confess I didn't expect a comedy when I first started watching this movie, but it's too funny not to have been intentional. But the humor is stark and extreme--not in a pathetically disgusting way like American Pie, but rather a minimalist bland way.
Hollywood has been attacking the eighties for years now as a "decade of greed" and "selfish", even though it was a time of a resurgent economy and a renaissance of American self-confidence. The age of Reagan was like waking up after sleeping off a bad seventies hangover.
But this one is hard to place, it seems as if the makers almost recognize that they're making a parody of the movies that have come before. They take the self-loving yuppie to farther extremes than others have, but it's basically the same story. I'd suggest watching this movie on a triple bill, or in conjunction with "Wall Street" and "Bright Lights, Big City". The latter, also based on a Bret Easton Ellis book, even has basically the same scene in a stylish dance club with the same New Order song playing, "True Faith". But this movie then takes the Charlie Sheen/Michael Fox model and moves him to whole new level: Maniac selfish murderer--who is so filled with loathing that he is losing his mind.
Christian Bale is quite good as an American yuppie, and his not quite there American accent actually adds to Bateman, the main character, as a phony. The blood isn't really even as bad as the book (which was quite controversial among women's groups when it came out, accused of being misogynistic). There's not really much of a plot, besides the gradual disintegration of Bateman, and intensification of the violence. The ending is strangely lacking, though it's hard to describe without giving it away (which others have done in their comments).