Soap Floats

Rating: 8/10 (26 April 2000)

Ah, those six-pack abs! For those of you who have been begging to see Brad Pitt at his toughest and grungiest, here's your movie! The film centers on a semi-secret group whose members pummel each other senseless (and senselessly) nightly in seedy basements. The club's leader, Tyler Durden, is a charismatic, Zen-conscious, manipulative misanthrope - and those are just some of his finer points. The film's protagonist, played by the talented Edward Norton, is a hopeless office-boy schlep stuck in a depressing, dead-end job, existing joylessly in a vanilla life that is supposed to signify the everyday lives of us regular folk.
The stark contrast in the two main characters is no accident, and we quickly come to realize that the narrator lives through Tyler vicariously, even as they both create Fight Club. What better way to learn about yourself and your fellow man than by engaging in a bare-knuckled bout of fisticuffs? Didn't these people ever hear of more conventional, less-painful methods such as primal scream or aspirin?
So what's the theme of this movie? Well, behind all the blood and guts, it's about finding oneself. It's about deciding whether to live your life as an ant performing the tasks of other ants or to live your life in ways that only your imagination can show you. I think it's also something about becoming a better person through violence, a theme we saw in A Clockwork Orange, way back when.
This is more than a mere fight movie, as its presumptuous theme indicates. Amazingly, with as much attention paid to the violence, there's actually room for a taut, creative script that's absolutely full of little nuggets of intelligence. This is a movie that beats you over the head with one theme (violence is good when used for self-improvement) while simultaneously sneaking in another, more clever theme. It's also got a fantastic twist right near the end, and if you see it coming - please shut up! The twist is reminiscent of another, even more popular movie (if I tell you which movie, then you'll more easily guess the secret), and if you're not looking for it - that is, if you're one of those who lets things happen in a movie, who doesn't try to guess each scene before it happens - you'll be shocked right out of your recliner. I finished watching this movie about half an hour ago, and I still feel a little uneasy - it can make that kind of impact on you.