Fantastic, engaging, brilliant, superb...

Rating: 10/10 (23 February 2001)

Well, well, well is this a great movie or what? This movie is great in many aspects. The acting is great. Christian Bale gives the performance for which all his future work will be rated against. The script is funny, dark and gloomy whenever it feels like it. The look and feel of the movie is very 80's. For some the shots of skyscrapers reminded me of that old TV show 'LA Law'.
-From this point on there are things that can be classed as spoilers. Ranging from small ones to heavy ones -

Some people may not like this movie for 2 reasons. The lack of plot and graphic violence and sex scenes. but the thing is the violence is hardly graphic (I think the most gruesome we get is when the serial killer swings an axe at someone and blood gets splattered on him and the floor). And the sex scenes... well they are graphic, but they are actually funny. Same with the murders. They all have this hilarious undertone that [to me] had me laughing through the entire 100 or so minutes.
We start the movie off with black credits on the left of screen while on the right a red liquid drips down. We think it is blood since the movie is about a serial killer, but later on we find out it is actually a red berry sauce being served over a nice little meal at an expensive restaurant. Inside that restaurant we meet high power, 80's yuppie Patrick Bateman (the delectable Christian Bale). The movies anti-hero. Him and his fellow workmates talk about why they aren't getting served. Their thinking... because Patrick wont give the waiter oral sex. Later on we meet his fiance Evelyn (Reese Witherspoon) as well as her best friend Courtney (Samantha Mathis), whom Patrick is having an affair with. Aswell as Courtney's fiance and patrick's workmate, who happens to be a closeted homosexual. We also meet another fellow worker on wallstreet Paul (Jared Leto).
In a hilarious running joke through the film everybody thinks Patrick Bateman is really someone else who they talk about Patrick Bateman with. Saying he's stupid, annoying and down-right pathetic. The humour in American Psycho is very black. Infact it's probably safe to say that the humour is so black, it's impossible to ever gain colour again. BLACK! What do I mean by really black? For some reason I found myself in hysterics with a scene in which Patrick chases a prostitute around his apartment wearing nothing. Absolutely nothing... but unfortunately good ol' Mr. Bateman has a chainsaw covering his "area" and we don't see anything. Later on in the scene we have the girl running down the apartment stairwell and at reaching the bottom Patrick drops a chainsaw on her. Funny? Hell yes. Scary? no, not really.
This movie isn't really scary. Scary as in Scream, Halloween etc because it is not a horror movie. it is a black comedy/80's satire.
All the performances in AP are good. But the movie does belong to Christian Bale who is looking very buff and sexy in the many scenes in which his he is shirtless or fully naked. Be warned straight men, there are a lot of shots of Christian's body while in a shower though we don't see anything too raunchy. Just a little backside.
Chloe Sivigny does very good as a the doe-eyed assistant to Patrick. Who does the best silent job ever. In the final scenes where she looks at patrick's work organiser and sees pictures of dead people that Patrick has drawn she just stares and is shocked. Even though she doesn't say anything it is very powerful. Willem Defoe is always cool. Here he plays a cop investigating Jared Leto's disappearance. Even the movie's co-writer/adapter has a role and a friend of Patrick.
Over all this movie was great. Very well made but not for everybody. Mary Harron and co have done a very good job adapting the very nasty book (which I have not read). They should've at least been nominated for an oscar. And Christian Bale was robbed of an oscar this year. He simply deserves it... more so than Tom Hanks or Russell -tough guy- Crowe, who showed a lot more talent in The Insider.
Anyway I loved this movie and hope you do too.
And... with the much talked about ending. Try figuring it within a day... or week. I'm still scratching my head as too whether *all* the murders were real or imagined... blah blah blah I'm talking too long.
10/10 or A+