One sick, twisted, hilarious, interesting, brilliant movie!

Rating: Null/10 (18 April 2000)

Warning, may contain some small spoilers:
If anyone remembers the 80's the way I do, it goes something like this.....
If you can graduate from a prestigious university in Canada or the U.S. you immediately will have a plethora of job offers thrown at you in which many of them will pay you large sums of money. There could be some in the new computer field, it could be a brokerage firm or it could be just plain and simply, big business.
It was cool, not just cool but imperative to wear the lateset fashions by Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein. The fitness craze was launched by Olivia Newton John, Arnold Schwartzenegger and Stallone. Words like diaretics and emphetimines were launched into our vernacular. We blasted our pecs, did our backs and spent countless hours doing sit-ups. BMer's and Jags and 'Vettes were the sought after cars and a man was judged by his wallet. Greed was good according to Gordon Gekko. Life was great. But it couldn't last and it didn't. And now here we are recovering from ( economically speaking ) the disasterous 90's. And we are reminded of it all again in this smart sadistic but brilliant satire of greed and lust in the 80's. Maybe the book was about a guy that just simply killed because he was psychotic, but the film is cynical look at what we all strived to be in the 80's and perhaps what we all still want to be in the new millenium. I have never seen a film like American Psycho before and I really don't anticipate on seeing one like it again. If you don't like this film it is maybe because you don't understand it. Maybe that isn't fair since I hated Magnolia and those that praise it say the same thing to me, but I do feel that way in this case.
Patrick Bateman is a 27 year old yuppie that has it all at some synthetic job in some synthetic building on Wall Street. He takes pride in everything that he does. Everything from his outer appearance to the look of his business cards. Everything is a trophy to him and to the cronies that inhabit his world. In one of the best scenes done in any film that I can remember, when Bateman is dragging a dead body to his car, with a train line of blood stains left behind by the body, one of his friends that he sees him on the streets says in ghastly shock as he is loading the body bag into the car, " Oh my gosh! Where did you get that designer bag? " That note, but not that note alone, but that note can be a microcosm for what the film is all about. People see what they want to see and this time in our history was perhaps the worst for it. The characters in this movie, while important in their own worlds, are merely just another face in the crowd that no one seems to really care about. Paul Allen may as well be a bum in an alley, that is how much fuss is created when he disappears. This is a world that can drive people mad just because someone elses business card has the perception of being nicer than the other guys. It is synthetic, un-noteworthy things that drive men nuts in this film, and especially the main character in this film.
Christian Bale is Patrick Bateman. At first I couldn't understand why the actor chose to play the character the way he was, but fifteen minutes later you do understand. This performance is one that should not be forgotten. He looks great on the outside but to paraphrase a line that he uses in the film " I have all the traits of a normal human being, but there simply is nothing going on upstairs. "
" Today I just had to kill a lot of people! "
American Psycho is a sick, twisted, hilarious and brilliant film. It is original and it will make you think long after you have left the theater. And as a bonus too, there is no clear conclusion to the film. You can interpret it two ways. Both ways make sense to me and maybe they are both right. I really don't care what the book was trying to do or say, this film has it's own way of saying it. I cannot recommend this film enough. If anything, it will challenge your thinking, and that is always a positive thing in a film. But other than that, it is a damn fine film and one of the best films so far in this young millenium!
9 out of 10