American Psycho; Great Film With A Lot To Say

Rating: 9/10 (5 July 2005)

I highly recommend it. The movie is based on the controversial 1991 novel by Bret Easton Ellis.
The film stars Christian Bale (Little Women, Batman Begins) as Patrick Bateman, a young, handsome, affluent executive in late 1980's New York City. He seems to have it all, cushy job, pretty fiancé (Reese Witherspoon), posh apartment, powerful friends. What he doesn't have is a soul. As he says in the beginning of the film, "There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable... I simply am not there." Patrick is a serial killer (or is he? watch the film, what do you think?). The film graphically portrays his nightly homicidal habits, without becoming too slasher flick about it. This film isn't for the faint at heart, besides blood and gore, there are some pretty graphic sexual encounters and nudity. But there is comedy here as well. You'll find yourself laughing at some sequences and feeling terribly guilty about it. The next moment you're wincing at it's raw violence.
If Patrick is the hyper prototype of the 80's yuppie male, then his friends are more realistic reflections of it. In one scene, he and his friends are discussing women. One of his friends asserts that the ideal woman "consists of a chick with a little hard body, who will satisfy all sexual demands without being too slutty about things, and who essentially will keep her dumb f***ing mouth shut". In another scene, he and his friends are discussing some of the world's problems. When Patrick lists some of the ills that society needs to solve (he doesn't really care, he just wants to be seen as knowledgeable), his friends are amused. The people around him in this yuppie society are obsessed with surfaces. They keep all of their real thoughts, concerns, and emotions buried, and only care about what people wear, drive, own, and buy. For this reason, Patrick, who actually has no inner emotions, is able to move undetected among them.
The film is an exposition of the morally bankrupt 1980's male dominated corporate culture. But this theme is still relevant today. Our culture idealizes the macho, ruthless businessman who treats women as objects and possessions. In a scene of the movie, Patrick tells a woman that he later murders that he's into "murders and executions" and she mishears him, thinking he said, "mergers and acquisitions"; it really comes to the same thing. It is these same men who are now running corporate America. Is it any wonder that corporations seem to feel so little responsibility to their employees, stockholders, the public, the environment, the law, or virtually anything at all? Indeed, Patrick's broad choice of victims in the film (even more in the book) mirror those who are often victimized by corporate America. Women, the poor, the homeless, minorities, the elderly, even animals.
Overall, this is a great film with superb acting by Christian Bale and a few others, including Chloe Sevigny who plays Jean, Patrick's secretary. The end is perplexing and will cause you to watch the entire movie again to see if you can figure it out.