Excellent film, flawed ending (spoilers).

Rating: 8/10 (17 April 2000)

When I had watched Fight Club two-thirds through, I thought it could quite possibly be the best film of the nineties. The social commentary was smart and forceful, yet subtle enough not to be preachy. To explore a subject of such importance (the post-modern society and what it does to man) with such clarity of vision was a bold deed, something rarely seen in a big budget Hollywood flick. Added to that, Fight Club had a great visual look, a set of powerful actors (Edward Norton is as good as ever, and Brad Pitt shows acting capability I would never have expected of him) and some of the most brilliant dialogue ever seen in cinema. To sum it up: this far everything seemed perfect.
But then came the so called surprise twist, and for a while it felt like a punch on the face. Although I had anticipated a solution like this (I noticed immediately that the character played by Norton had no name), I never expected it to be this crude and over-emphasizing. There's nothing wrong with the idea the twist presents; it has in fact been evident throughout the film. But the way the film exposes it is so straightforward that it makes the viewer re-examine every scene of the movie in the light of this new revelation, and on that level the script simply doesn't work. I could give you numerous examples, but that would give away the surprise (and I've already stretched the IMDB guidelines far enough), so I'll leave that job up to you.
As I said before, there's nothing wrong with the surprise twist itself, only the way it is presented. Had I written the script, I would have made it far more subtle and ambiguous, so that the audience would not be told the truth, and they would have to figure it out themselves. By choosing the road it does Fight Club crudely underestimates the viewers' intelligence, which is strange considered how intelligent the overall script is.
The other thing I would have changed was the way Fight Club ended. Although the ending was not as disappointing as the surprise revelation, it was still somewhat lame. The film had already wondered so far off the beaten path, that it should have had the courage to go even further. Now all we get is "love is all you need", and while it may be the truth, this should not be the film to tell us that.