A metaphysical, creative, well-acted and intriguing movie.

Rating: 7/10 (25 February 2000)

Any film of Fight Club's nature is, essentially, best judged not for any moral perspective that it offers, but rather for the degree to which it leads its audience to debate whether any such perspective *is* offered; with this in mind, Fight Club is a successful effort - because, rather than in spite, of its many self-contradictions. In the duality of the glorification and criticism of the cult of violence that is its most obvious device, the movie presents a number of different elements in juxtaposition, and is the richer for doing so. Rather than adopt overly simplistic, black-and-white arguments, Fight Club presents many sides to its numerous coins, so that we are never sure who is deemed the "villain" and who the "hero", nor even the anti-hero. The plot twist towards the end of the movie is the realisation of this aim, taken to extremes - rather silly extremes, admittedly, but it gets away with it.. just. We're given a portrayal of the conventional and the unconventional; of good and evil - but one where the respective labels are shifted and reevaluated at every turn, in a somewhat dizzying and rather confusing method. That the film's ultimate message is confusing, though, is by no means a criticism - Fight Club is most powerful in exploring and exploiting the inherent contradictions and ambiguities of everyday life. Where some reviewers have chosen to stick to one particular reading of a central "message", doing so is self-deceiving. It should be understood that this is a tale of self-fulfillment, of coming to understand oneself, of extremes and extreme repercussions. Arguably, things get a little *too* extreme in this movie, and the film's conceit is rather tenuous; nonetheless, it remains the perfect tool for evaluating the split-personality of both ourselves and of our culture. We are lead on an intriguing, exciting and at times rather terrifying ride that, somewhat surprisingly, is most potent when the direction cuts back a little from its reliance on fetishizing violence, revealing an intelligent, almost kafkaesque core.
Stylistically, the movie is sometimes a little overly pretentious and self-referential: the "subtly" inserted frames (reflecting the plot) are jarring and rather smug, while the violence is, as mentioned above, sometimes needlessly excessive to the extent that it steals the limelight. Nonetheless, this is a movie filled with clever jokes on society (as with the soap) and interesting turns, although the trist comes both too late and too early, leaving an uncomfortable amount of time in which to wrap everything up. Ultimately, the films successes are also its failures, insomuch as it is a little too subtle for its own good, at times, and a little too unsubtle for its own good at others. It is the eternal doom of any similarly intricate film that it will be both under- and over-analyzed; perhaps I'm guilty of the latter, here, but as with other Fincher directions this is a movie that grows in scope the more it is interpreted, for better or for worse. It is interesting to read other reviewers' comments that suggest that the Norton character "won" over Tyler Durdon in the end; my own interpretation was the reverse - this was Videodrome, not The Exorcist. Either reading, though, is valid - and, in a sense, the two can exist simultaneously. It is precisely this ambiguity that is the movie's "message" and its measure.