Those Blood-Stained '80s

Rating: 8/10 (26 June 2007)

Directed by Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol, The Notorious Bettie Page) and based on Bret Easton Ellis' (Less than Zero, The Rules of Attraction) controversial novel, American Psycho follows the antics of stockbroker/serial killer, uber yuppie Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale). When watching this movie, you must remove all serious films about serial killers from your mind because American Psycho is a parody of horror movies and a satire about the materialism and shallowness of America during the 1980s. If you can view this as a very dark comedy, it works.
Patrick Bateman is a blank slate of a human being who puts on the mask of being the modern male. He displays all the trappings of what constitutes the successful male in our society: lots of money, lots of women, lots of partying, and lots of toys (i.e., for the '80s, his Walkman, CDs, and, of course, video tapes.) But all the successful male trappings are only Patrick's outfit he wears in society to fit in. The shiny superficiality is reflected in the immaculate white and stainless steel décor of his apartment. The only thing that that makes him human ultimately is his blood lust. When committing his horrendous acts, he breaks through the shiny exterior to the "meat and bones" of it all where the deeper meaning might liethat is why when Patrick murders Paul Allen, it so disturbingly satisfying and amusing. After Patrick is done hacking up fellow stockbroker/nemesis Paul Allen (Jared Leto) who keeps confusing him with another stockbroker, he turns, and one side of his face is covered with blood, and the other is not, so you finally see the two sides of Patricka human with some complexity. With all the mistaken identity in the movie among the stockbrokers in their accepted uniform of identical designer haircuts, glasses, suits , and not to mention business cards, Patrick commits suicide in a sense with Paul Allen--murdering himself, and all the artificiality of his lifestyle.
As for the anti-feminist, misogynist criticism that both the book and film received, having Mary Harron as director does bring more of a female sensibility to American Psycho. I don't think a male director could have objectified Christian Bale's body as beautifully as Harron did, especially in the shower and chainsaw scenes. If you look at the female characters, they are quite lost, and that is a commentary on society. Courtney Rawlinson (Samantha Mathis), Patrick's mistress, is a high society girl whose only function in life is to take pharmaceutical drugs, and Evelyn Williams (Reese Witherspoon), Patrick's fiancée, is a rich Daddy's girl whose only function in life is to shop. On the DVD there is a hilarious deleted scene in which Patrick and Evelyn are in bed, and Patrick strides on top of her, unzipping his pants, while Evelyn looks away at the TV and tries to watch the Home Shopping Network; then she looks up and deadpans, "What you want me to do with that? Floss with it."
The most disturbing scenes to me are when Patrick kills the homeless man, the dog and Christie the street prostitute. The homeless man scene is pure camp as Patrick tells him that they have nothing in common. As for the stomping of the dog, it is all implied with sound effects. For a movie that is considered so violent, much of the violence is implied and left up to the mind of the viewers. The chainsaw scene is where the movie uses every cliché in the scary movie business: the madman chasing the woman in jeopardy and bloody corpses popping out of closets. As Patrick wields his chainsaw towards Christie, it becomes more phallicthe chainsaw, the nail gun are all just extensions of his penis, an ironic sign of both power and insecurity. As Christie runs down the stairs, from a top Patrick positions the chainsaws and flings it down the stairwell with perfect aim, piercing her body. After that Patrick becomes an unreliable narrator in the movie, and you wonder if this is real. For some reason, the image of Christie pierced with a chainsaw reminds me of the infamous Hustler cover of the woman being fed through the meat grindera much referred to image by outraged feminists. But as disturbing as both scenes are, both are crucial to the movie's point of being a dark comedy and parody.
Christian Bale (Batman Begins, The Prestige, The New World) will always be remembered for his role of Patrick Bateman. He eats the camera herealthough not literally! Some have thought his acting to be exaggerated, but that is the point: Bale plays someone who must act through his life to achieve his goal of "fitting in." Bale's performance also gives a bit of humanity to Patrick, especially during the scene where Jean (Chloe Sevigny), his secretary, is at his apartment. Bale acts charming to Sevigny's obliviousness all the while he looks in his kitchen cabinets full of murdering tools. He aims a nail gun behind Sevigny unbeknownst to her. A comical misunderstanding happens between them as Jean thinks that "getting hurt" by Patrick would be by having an affair with him while he knows that it would be killing her. Sadness washes over Bale's face as he tells her that she better go, and, for a second, you see a real person.
American Psycho will not be for everyone, and the ending is cryptic. It doesn't romanticize the '80s, but it captures some of the ugliness of it. The soundtrack is pure guilty pleasure with Katrina and the Waves,Simply Red, The Information Society, New Order, Phil Collins, and Huey Lewis and the News. Bateman spews out little interesting, if somewhat pathetic reviews of these musicians and songs to his victims beforehand. You'll never hear "Hip to be Square" or "Sussudio" in same way again after watching this movie.