Violent, shocking: A truly terrifying depiction of the mental state.

Rating: 10/10 (29 April 2011)

American PSYCHO features Christian Bale playing Patrick Bateman, a rich man with a huge ego who is also a psychopath. Christian Bale plays this role brilliantly, delivering great lines, and giving the audience a character that both frightens, disturbs and entertains at the same time. Performances, although minor by other characters such as Jared Leto and Reese Witherspoon are also good too.
Featuring enough pop culture references, it avoids being pretentious by instead of making the film appear cultured, it gives depth to the character and by that, making him more terrifying. The screenplay captures the want for wealth and money so well that the film becomes painfully realistic. Although this may never be the case because it is hard to relate to Bateman's hatred for all forms of life, it does present the characters as being wealth- obsessed and smug, but most importantly, how impossible it is to hide a hatred. Despite the over-the top violence, the deliberately cheesy lines and the exercise scenes featuring Christian Bale that seems to have been copy and pasted out from an infomercial, never does this film seem fake in any context.
The film does fall short of being sometimes direction less in its aims and a lot of violence does seem for shock value. People may find it to be emotionally vapid at times, due to its lack of morals or convictions, but American Psycho is recommended due to its realism and performances