A grim satire of Wall Street-based society

Rating: 10/10 (22 May 2011)

A successful executive, Patrick Bateman (played by Christian Bale) is a typical Wall Street financial top dog. He likes and does all the typical things Wall Street people do: parties, drugs, living in posh apartments and so on. However, as the title suggests, Bateman has another thing he likes to do: he is a psychopathic murderer.
This satirical black comedy demonstrates some of the realities of the modern Wall Street-based society. Although it is not clear if the author of the novel intends it (not having read the novel), the story could be interpreted as a story of Wall Street executives literally getting away with murder. It may not be that the Wall Street executives are particularly "evil" people themselves, but because of their class position, the executives wield enormous amounts of power and privilege. Thus, it is very instructive when Bateman finds out that nobody wants to believe his confessions of a uber-privileged executive being a serial killer on the side. Also, the behavior of law enforcement when it confronts him is markedly different with all deference being offered to him as a mark of his exalted position and in the end, it is not clear if law enforcement would ever be interested in having justice served to him, but it is clear from one of the last scenes, where he shows his own incredulity at his lawyer laughing off his sordid confessions, that Bateman ironically realizes his own hyper-privileged position pretty much absolves him of any crimes of mass murder he may want to continue to commit.