Serial killers in business attire

Rating: 10/10 (29 March 2007)

"American Psycho" is a difficult film to review because one, it's never clear whether or not the events in the film are real, or are just a figment of Patrick Bateman's (Christian Bale) warped imagination. It's deliberately never stated and is something that is best left up to the viewer to decide. The Bret Easton Ellis novel from which this film is based, caused a stir upon its 1991 publishing, which satirized yuppie culture, Reaganomics-gone-amok, and crass materialism during the 1980s.
As it would turn out, Bateman, a successful Wall Street investment banker, finally decides to give into an insatiable blood-lust that begins with the cold-blooded murder of a homeless man, followed by a colleague (Jared Leto), and an assortment of call girls and prostitutes. Why Bateman does these horrific things without provocation, purpose or explanation, is all part of the film's bizarre appeal and is not just for shock value.
Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich in "Scream") rhetorically asked why did Hannibal Lecter eat people? Why did Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers slash up promiscuous teenagers in their respective film series? So why does Patrick Bateman butcher prostitutes in his apartment? Maybe because he's a pretty sick guy? Who knows. All this can be debated for hours on end in a criminal behavior class (for which I'm reviewing this as part of an assignment) about Bateman's motivations.
Bateman does not fit the profile of any known serial murderer before him. He's educated, wealthy, respected by his co-workers, and has a well-preserved body to kill for (no pun intended). So why does he one night, out of the blue, decide to chop a guy's face in two with an ax? Nobody knows, but my theory is that he just does it for because he has an unquenchable blood-lust that he suddenly feels the impulse to give into. To the world at large, however, he retains his businessman persona. To his fiancée (Reese Witherspoon), he's an all right if not somewhat shallow guy to want to be engaged to. He's also very sensible: he's often the one to straighten out his colleagues when they make a**es of themselves in public by making racially insensitive remarks.
"American Psycho" takes a shockingly funny and horrific look at Bateman's twisted reality, all without the safety of a net. Director Mary Harron looks at the Wall Street world of male bravado, closet homosexuality, materialism, and masculinity without a single flinch. (Is there anything more blatantly homo-erotic than comparing the print on business cards?) When we look at this world, we wonder: Did the '80s really look like this? Did an insane Wall Street investment banker go on a naked rampage, chasing a hooker out of his apartment with a chainsaw?
Perhaps they did (I was too young to remember), but Ellis certainly remembered, and caught considerable flak from it. That Bateman is able to wonder why his murder spree goes unpunished, why he can't inflict his inner pain onto an uncaring world and why a detective named Kimball (Willem Dafoe) doesn't think to ask him harder questions about his nocturnal activities, all escape him, and us. "American Psycho" is a confusing, funny, and oft-shocking expose of a world that is best forgotten in history, but will still be nonetheless fascinating to criminal justice and psychology majors until the end of time.
10/10