Better than the book, but that's not saying much

Rating: 8/10 (5 January 2008)

I love books, and I always think you should read a book before you watch the movie; or, if failing that, you should read the book sometime after. But, for the first time and probably the last time, I am telling you: if you want "American Psycho" skip the book ENTIRELY! This is a review of the movie, not the book, so I'll start with what the movie did right as opposed to what the book did wrong. Firstly, I'm glad Mary Harron directed this, because a woman is sometimes better able to satirize the egos and self-posturing of men simply because she isn't one; she has an objective viewpoint. In the first hour especially we see Patrick Bateman's weaknesses as he tries desperately to appear richer than his coworkers. He applies more lotions and creams than a stereotyped gay man, he actually cares whether his business cards looks better than those of his friends, and he is enraged with jealousy when he finds out that Paul Allen's apartment is even richer than his. "I'm trying to fit it!" he snaps at his girlfriend, Evelyn.
Who is this Paul Allen? He is one of the early victims of Patrick Bateman, murdered with an ax. Bateman, see, has a peculiarly strong bloodlust that is even stronger than his lust for music and opulence. He kills people an awful lot and really enjoys it. And he has not a scrap of remorse; the only emotions he can feel are greed and disgust.
The last half-hour, however, reveals the weakness of the source material. The ending in the book was a mishmash mess of epic proportions, and in following it the movie can only make it so much better. It is when the viewer realizes, though not as acutely as while reading the book, that a serial killer is such a stock character that no halfway-decent person can ever hope to portray accurately. Not even Christian Bale's great acting can fully dispel the fact that Bret Easton Ellis had no idea how to make a convincing antihero.
Now that we're on the subject of the book, here's my chance to explain how the film improved it. First of all, the book was just too long. It was endless in its descriptions of the yuppie lifestyle--so endless, in fact, that I felt I would kill myself if I ever saw the words "Argyle socks" or "Ralph Saint-Laurent" again. Thankfully, Mary Harron (and her co-writer Guinevere Turner) have condensed the first 100 pages of the novel into their appropriate 10 minutes. They have let Patrick's love for music show itself through the dialogue and acting rather than spending whole chapters' worth of material describing various bands. They also managed to introduce Detective Donald Kimball within 30 minutes when Ellis took 2/3 of the book to get there. While Ellis' horrid editor saw fit not to excise any of the endless tracks of puffed-up prose, the medium of film required it to be cut, and it was automatically an improvement.
Yet if Mary Harron improved the pacing and the satire, she didn't manage to improve the killing scenes. While Ellis committed the sin of going too far, she committed the sin of not going far enough. Since Ellis's style hinted at an ego bigger than Patrick Bateman, the pornographic scenes of fantastical murder were horrible to read--not at all disturbing, just plain ridiculous. But Mary Harron didn't go far enough; it was as if she was purposely trying to avoid the dreaded NC-17; though of course she got it anyway and had to cut 17 seconds from the threesome. And yet she could have gone a lot farther. She was doing a satire, not a puffed-up fantasy like Ellis, so a great deal of violence would have been a lot more excusable. I am not saying that more gore would have made the movie better; I'm saying that she needn't have handled the scenes so gingerly.
In all, a fair film. I think I would have appreciated it a bit more, however, if I had never read the book, because my hatred for Ellis' pile of crap did leak over a little into my movie experience. Which is why I'm telling you: if you want to experience "American Psycho", skip the book and go directly the movie. That's the first time you've heard me say that, and it'll probably be the last.