Unnecessary brutality

Rating: 4/10 (30 October 2000)

I'm still a little bit unsure about what exactly this movie wants to express.
Does it simply want to shock us with the evil which "lurks inside the hearts of men" (to quote "The Shadow")?
Does it want to show the inner demons of a mentally departed, totally insane man?
Does it want to portray the incredible fact that in a faceless society, murder goes unpunished?
To be true, the last suggestion seems a little bit hard to swallow. Neither do I believe that even superficial Yuppies are so unable to tell apart the faces of their colleagues (having myself an extremely well memory of faces, this strikes me as even more impossible), nor do I believe that such a murder spree would not be noticed by anybody.
Of course, the story does not want to portray the whole murder spree realistically - it wants to speak to us in metaphorical ways and you know what? It fails.
The movie left me confused in the end and disgusted in the middle. I believe that there is enough brutality in this world, it does not need films like this or "Natural born killers" or any others which portray serial killers.
Though the movie was sometimes good, especially in the first 30 minutes showing life and decadence of Bateman, it turned into a piece of gore the longer it took.
The actors did great jobs - especially Christian Bale, whose face became a mask of insanity - but still, it failed to deliver a decent message.