A dense and bizarre psychological thriller

Rating: 7/10 (29 September 2008)

Welcome to the mind of Patrick Bateman: Wall Street broker, fine diner, playboy, oh and serial killer extroadinare. Bateman claims only part of himself is based in humanity and similarly, only part of this film is based on reason or sanity.
"American Psycho" is easily one of the top five most deranged films of all time. Those with a taste for the bizarre and an interest in the abstraction of realism will find it great, those who prefer movies grounded in, well, something, will at the very least be amused by the perverse nature of the plot and Bateman's psychotic character.
Christian Bale does some pretty great work with Bateman, giving us a very dissociative identity look to the clearly insane killer, showing him as very cold and crafty while also emotional and irrational. His character jumps all over the place and Bale really has the look and skills to play all those kinds of characters.
I have to say that while I like Mary Harron's visual choices with the film, overall I don't know if we got deep enough into the meddle that is this plot and the cavernous mind of Bateman. The thin line between reality/imagination, sanity/insanity is very clear, but the social commentary is sort of overshadowed by the film's taste for the absurd. I definitely think there's richness, but there is a lot of thickness too.
I suppose if you come at this film with a more abstract perspective than a desire to sort things out and make sense of them, you'll find more things to enjoy about the film other than Bateman's philosophical conversations about sellout recording artists while he indulges in one fantasy or another. It's strange, and while strange is good, strange also needs to be handled a bit more thoughtfully than in "Psycho."