Sick, bitter, sarcastic, weird, brilliant- one of the best and most underrated films of 2000

Rating: 8/10 (11 March 2001)

AMERICAN PSYCHO (2000) ***1/2 Directed by Mary Harron. Starring: Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Chloe Sevigny, Cara Seymour, Samantha Mathis, Jared Leto, Reese Witherspoon.
While writing Christian Bale's name above, I almost confused myself and wrote Patrick Bateman, the name of his character in AMERICAN PSYCHO. This is the kind of reaction that Bale, once the boy in the tragic EMPIRE OF THE SUN, causes in the audience- he fits perfectly Patrick Bateman, the Wall Street yuppie who starts killing people at night for no apparent reason. A pity that Mary Harron's film, based on Breat Easton Ellis' polemic and successful book, was so overlooked and underrated. It became known for the wrong reason: a scene of menage-a-trois that had to be cut in order to avoid the NC-17 rating (BTW, the scene wasn't cut here in Brazil!!!!!!) and the extreme violence. Some people called AMERICAN PSYCHO a pointless satire, or a satire about nothing. They aren't totally wrong: it is about the "sweet nothing" of the '80s, the age of yuppies, who had much money and not much else.
Mary Harron prints a weird style into AMERICAN PSYCHO, a kind of cross between David Lynch, David Fincher and herself- what can be seen in I SHOT ANDY WARHOL, her very interesting film debut. I haven't read Breat Easton Ellis' book, but I guess Mary, as a director and a screenwriter, did a good job, avoiding the extreme violence, but showing it stylized. The characters have a great development and the situations keep our attention from start to finish. It's awesome when Patrick talks about music before killing his next victim, when he and his friends compare his cards and all his observations about that stupid age and how he tried to escape from that, even being part of it. His lines are sarcastic, ironic.
Patrick Bateman is not the usual main character of a film, so it would be difficult to play him. But Christian Bale perfectly shows how ambiguous and hard to understand Patrick is. We hate him and love him at the same time. I loved his performance! The supporting actors are also great, even in small roles. Willem Dafoe is detective Donald Kimball, who has some strange dialogues with Patrick. Chloe Sevigny is great as his secretary Jean, maybe the only innocent person in a nest of snakes. Cara Seymour is Christie, a melancholic prostitute who keeps going to his flat- I voted for her on the IMDb poll which asked: "From the movies of 2000 I felt most sorry for...". BTW, she is in my favorite scene, the weirdest of the whole film, right after the second menage-a-trois scene (the "yuppie" written on the wall, the bodies, so cool!), mixing very black humor and tension. Jared Leto is Paul Allen, the first victim we see being killed. Samantha Mathis is Courtney, Bateman's drug addict lover. And Reese Witherspoon is Evelyn Williams, Bateman's annoying fiancé- I wanted more of her.
On its last third, AMERICAN PSYCHO shows the truth beyond it, resulting in an ambiguous, thought-provoking finale, which stays with us for many days. It proves that AMERICAN PSYCHO is a delightful film to watch, but not in a good way. It's a wicked, sick, bitter, sarcastic, weird, brilliant satire, a triumph of black humor, with many memorable moments. It's an admirable, audacious portrait of the yuppie age, taking the love and the hate to that era to the last consequences. Expect surprises like in a sort of magic show. Love it or hate it, you won't leave the movies indifferent. And someday they wanted to put Leonardo DiCaprio as Patrick Bateman...
I saw the menage-a-trois scene in the movies, you didn't...!!!