One of the Best Films Of All Time With a Perfect Script

Rating: 10/10 (10 May 2016)

Fight Club is directed by David Fincher and stars Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf, and Jared Leto. Edward Norton's character, known only as the Narrator, is living a depressing life. His day job is behind a desk, and he accompanies himself by buying things that he doesn't really need in order to find fulfillment in his life. He begins attending support groups for conditions that he doesn't have, in order to feel relief through expressing his pain to those who have it worse.
Once Bonham Carter's character, Marla Singer, begins showing up to these meetings, he begins to feel remorse in his life again. However, once he meets cool guy Tyler Durden (Pitt), he, along with Tyler, start a "fight club," a place in which men who seek fulfillment may find it through beating each other up. Once things with both Tyler and Marla begin to get a bit shaky, our Narrator must fix his own problems without the help of others.
It's very rare to find a film in which you completely love everything about. In my humble opinion, however, Fight Club is easily one of the best films ever made. With its eerie direction, fantastic acting, and more than compelling characters, Fight Club is as close as it gets to perfect, with no issues to be found in it. The flawless script contributes to my liking of this movie, due to amazing dialogue and great detail upon the current setting.
If anyone has ever read the script for Fight Club, it's just shy of 200 pages, and that is magnificently impressive. The detail the script goes into is purely astounding, and the lines are written, and performed, perfectly. The script, written by Jim Uhls (and based off of the novel by Chuck Palahniuk), is incredibly written in near every way, with great in depth depictions of how each shot was to be set up, and how the actors were to perform their lines.
The direction, by David Fincher, is exemplary, with great camera angles and surprisingly memorable shots. The shot I remember most particularly is when Tyler Durden is delivering the final rule of fight club (that being the eighth), and the camera zooms on the side of his face, passing his head and spinning quickly to the next shot of two men fighting. Every single shot, like the one just mentioned, is brilliant, excellently pulled off by Fincher.
The characters, combined with the talented acting behind them, is also very unique. Although the Narrator is supposed to be a boring everyday man, the viewer cares for his situations deeply. Throughout the film, he breaks the fourth wall multiple times, and this adds a very personal level the caring for him through the entire run time of the film. Norton plays this character wonderfully, thanks to his great acting abilities. The character of Tyler Durden is easily one of the best, and coolest, characters ever put to film. Every line that Pitt delivers as Tyler is flawless, and deserves all the recognition that a character, and his actor, could ever receive.
The other characters, such as Bonham Carter's Marla, Meat Loaf's Bob, and Jared Leto's Angel Face, are also amazing. The audience quickly sympathizes with everybody in the film, thanks to great acting and dialogue. Once again, the script's lines are written and delivered flawlessly, with each actor giving his or her line ideally. Each character is well rounded, and has a great arc throughout the run time of Fight Club.
The pacing of Fight Club is also astounding. An almost 2 hour 30 minute film goes by as if the story is told in 20 minutes, and flies by so quickly. This is mostly due to the quick, yet detailed, script, and fantastic direction. Both Fincher and Uhls make this movie zoom by, as if no time has gone by at all. Each of the actors also contribute to this aspect, ultimately making the film feel very short.
The last thing I'll mention is the plot twist. Without spoiling anything, Fight Club has one of, if not the, best plot twists in film history. Everything throughout the film sets up for the twist, yet we, the audience, don't pick up on the clues when watching the film for the first time. Fight Club is a rare type of film in which contains a better experience watching it for the second time than watching it for the first. The twist is perfectly built up to, and flawlessly executed in every way.
Overall, Fight Club is one of my favorite films of all time, and I like to say that it's one of the best movies ever made. I'd recommend Fight Club to anyone that can handle violence and language, because it's truly worth anyone's time.