a searing indictment of '80s yuppies

Rating: 6/10 (16 June 2005)

"Wall Street" showed America's billionaires as worthless human beings, but "American Psycho" goes one step further: it tells of a Gordon Gekko-type who is actually a murderer. Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) is quite possibly the most despicable kind of person imaginable. For starters, he's as vain as can be: only twenty-seven years old, he is already using excluding mask. He has gotten a job in his daddy's firm and spends all day listening to CDs while his secretary does his work for him. Whenever he and his equally despicable buddies (or is that "cronies"?) get together, they brag about their business cards. When Patrick sees that his friend Paul has a "better" business card, that's the end of Paul. It ends up that Patrick just kills almost anyone.
"American Psycho" is really a slam on the whole stock broker culture. But it seems that such people deserve to get slammed.