Oh, what have we done?

Rating: Null/10 (17 July 2001)

This movie had the potential to be something really great. Perhaps one of the best movies of the year. But something was missing that turned 'American Psycho' into an absolute joke.
I have not read the story and don't intend to after watching the film. They're probably different but I've had enough of the 'American' all together. The plot and direction of the movie seemed good and could have gone somewhere if the studio people hadn't done such a hack job of what they had to work with.
They (writers, producers, directors, actors) screwed this film up in more than one way. The writing was terrible. I thought that it seemed to drift off and go into a different direction than what the story was going into. There were a lot of comments and one-liners put into the script that made no sense whatsoever. The movie's time could have been cut in half and would have covered the same amount of material.
The acting was good in some parts. Now this was the first time that I had seen Christian Bale in anything before. His acting was tolerable but nothing special. The smartest thing that this film had was a lesser known actor in the lead role. Even though the setting and story called for a strange and unusual man to play the part of Patrick Bateman, the character's speech and actions were to dull and slow for the movie. I disliked the film for another reason pertaining to the actors and characters. Bale was the only real person who had an input into the movie. He delivered almost all of the lines and was in almost every scene. The film showed a number of business buddies to the killer but none of them really had anything to do with the film except for the character of Paul Allen played by Jared Leto. This role was messed up from the very beginning. We were introduced to him but really never learned anything about him. Before you know it he's dead and we're left listening to Phil Collins is it?
Before I saw this film, I pictured it as one with a lot of killings. After all, it is titled 'American Psycho'. Wrong. We were shown very little as to how the bodies pile up. A murder here and maybe another one to come but there was just nothing to it.
Once nearing the end, I thought that the film would take a turn for the better and would end up being a huge surprise. Wrong again. It ended at the drop of a hat and never really explained what happened to the main character. A lot of questions were never answered and this was probably the worst part of the film. (Like there were any good ones?)
I must say that I was surprised as to how I reacted to the film. I pictured a really interesting, scary movie but it was nothing more than a good story line trying to break through an awful script. This seems to be the trend nowadays. Hollywood just keeps destroying possibly terrific movies.

'American Psycho' was just too slow for my liking. The beginning started off slow, the middle ran dry and the end was a total disappointment. The previews that I had seen showed an entirely different movie than what I actually saw. It wasn't a good one. Avoid this movie and try a real horror.