"I think my mask of sanity is about to slip."

Rating: 7/10 (29 November 2007)

I'd be lying if I didn't admit that Bret Easton Ellis' novel, "American Psycho," completely sickened me. It's a fascinating dark satire, but mostly for all the wrong reasons, with chapters of indescribably graphic sexual content and violence. If Ellis was aiming to receive a strong emotional response with his novel, then he certainly succeeded. I most definitely didn't enjoy it  in fact, I felt so uncomfortably filthy that I could hardly get to sleep  but he certainly knows which buttons to push. Thus, it was with some trepidation that I approached Mary Harron's 2000 film adaptation, which starred an up-and-coming Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman, a murderous psychopath who finds himself caught up in the rampant materialism of the 1980s and early 1990s. Thankfully, and I say this with the greatest relief imaginable, the intense violence of the novel was toned down considerably for its translation to the screen, and, despite some weak direction in various scenes, Christian Bale's performance is positively awesome.
To look at him, you would never have guessed that Patrick Bateman was a disturbed serial killer. He is 27 years of age, handsome, intelligent, impeccably-stylish and holds a high-paying job at the respected Wall Street investment firm of Pierce & Pierce. He tries everything within his power to fit into society, but cannot suppress his distaste towards it, erupting into nightly sprees of blood-lust, during which he tortures and murders women and others who evoke his revulsion. Though we are not offered any concrete explanations for Bateman's psychosis, these acts of incredible violence appear to act as a distraction from the frustrating monotony of his 1980s yuppie lifestyle, and as a means of overcoming the intense feelings of inadequacy he harbours among his peers. Though Bateman candidly speaks of his horrific crimes on more than one occasion, the people around him are seemingly so absorbed in their chaotic, materialist lives that they hardly acknowledge his presence. In a stark indictment of American life, society is so busy comparing business cards, booking restaurant reservations, using recreational drugs and discussing fashion trivia that nobody even notices when one unhinged mad-man slaughters dozens of innocent people.
Less than a decade ago, Christian Bale was pretty much an unknown, having starred in a few notable films {such as Steven Spielberg's 'Empire of the Sun (1987)'}, but nothing that would make him a household name. After a string of actors  Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio  showed a passing interest in the film's main role, the opportunity fell to Bale, who delivers an absolutely extraordinary performance, portraying the infamous Patrick Bateman as cool, calm and collected character on the surface. However, to the scenes of violence, he brings a frenzied intensity to the role that is both disturbing and darkly amusing. Bateman's cocky lectures on 1980s pop music, prior to each of his killing sprees, are delivered with relish. It's perhaps a good thing that the film's director, Mary Harron, was a female, otherwise much of 'American Psycho' might easily have been misconstrued as sexist. In actual fact, the film always stops short of glorifying its gruesome protagonist, following his exploits with obvious disapproval and repulsion.
Now we come to the most fascinating question posed by the film: how much of what Bateman does may we accept as reality? In the novel, Bret Easton Ellis cleverly keeps the answer to this completely ambiguous, offering scattered hints that support each of the possibilities. In media interviews, director Mary Harron has stated that she had always intended for Bateman's murders to be completely real, though I think that this is where her direction was a bit weak; I'll wager that almost everybody who hasn't read the book finished the film with the belief that Bateman had imagined all the killings. The final scene, in which Harold Carnes (Stephen Bogaert) claims to have recently had dinner with one of Bateman's victims, Paul Allen (Jared Leto), was handled quite well, since we already know that, throughout the film, it is commonplace for characters to mistake each other for somebody else {indeed, at the start of that very conversation, Carnes refers to Bateman as "Davis"}. The scene of which I am not quite so enthusiastic is Bateman's revisit to Paul Allen's residence, where he finds a perfectly-clean apartment and a real estate agent. In the novel, it was written in a way that made the reader wonder "why has the real estate company covered up the horrific murders?" In the film, we're left without any doubt that Bateman is delusional.