"I think my mask of sanity is about to slip." Didn't do much for me.

Rating: 5/10 (17 June 2007)

American Psycho is set in New York where Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) the Vice President of a Wall Street banking firm enjoys a hugely successful life with a beautiful apartment, loads of money, the best clothes, the finest food & all the luxuries anyone could ever want. However under the calm & calculating exterior Patrick has psychological problems as he has a violent blood-lust which he satisfies by killing people he has contempt for & he also likes perverted sex sessions with prostitutes (then again who wouldn't?). His latest victim Paul Allen (Jared Leto) is missed & his fiancÃ© hires private detective Donald Kimball (Willem Dafoe) to find him, will Patrick be exposed as the homicidal maniac that he is or can he get away with it...
This American Canadian co-production was co-written & directed by Mary Harron & I have to say that I didn't think that much of it despite it's reputation. The social satire laden script by Harron & Guinevere Turner who played Elisabeth the high class prostitute in the film was based on the controversial novel of the same name by Bret Easton Ellis & I just don't 'get' it's appeal or why anyone would particularly want to sit down & watch it, overall I think it's quite a dull & repetitive film with some nice dialogue & a few decent scenes which save it from total banality. Some of Bateman's monologues along with the amusing yet pointless speeches about the merits of 80's pop groups & the style of people's business cards are pretty funny at times if trivial & if your looking for some sex & nudity then American Psycho might do it for you. I was expecting more in the horror department if I'm honest, there's barely a drop of blood in it & certainly nothing graphic, pretty much all of the character's are very unlikeable & one dimensional with Willem Dafoe's cop getting about three scenes before he is completely dropped & I also thought it was boring with pretty much the same thing happening scene after scene. I wasn't impressed by the ambiguous ending either which tries to be clever but I just found it frustrating as it never clarifies if it was all in Bateman's imagination. Personally I didn't think it was anything to write home about but there does seem to be a lot of people out there who like it, so maybe I just went into it with the wrong expectations & quite simply it's just not for me.
Director Harron does OK, there's a nice elegance to the way this is shot with nice camera slick moves. The film nails the whole 80's yuppie thing very well as these unlikeable people spend money like water, care for nothing or no one but themselves & have beautiful apartments for which I'm very jealous. I found myself becoming bored with all the yuppie satire going on & again it just felt very repetitive. I wouldn't say there's anything scary here or even particularly that violent although there are a couple of fairly strong sex scenes.
With a supposed budget of about $8,000,000 this looks nice enough with sleek & stylish cinematography but what does that matter when the film did so little for me? Set in New York it was actually mostly filmed in Ontario in Canada. The acting is OK, I don't really know if I liked Christian Bale's performance or not. Willem Dafoe is utterly wasted in a nothing part.
American Psycho is trying to be a complex dark thriller which wants to say something about 80's upper class society in New York, I'm sorry but weren't the 80's like 20 years ago? I'm sure there are many out there who like or even love this film & I'm proud to say right here & now that I'm not one of them, average at best & an irrelevant bore at worst. Followed by the straight-to-video American Psycho 2: All American Girl (2002) which has no connection to this at all apart from a vague Patrick Bateman reference.