Oh, Fight Club, you almost had me there

Rating: 7/10 (21 December 2006)

Movies like this are intensely frustrating. They get so close to the greatness mark, enticing you with how good they are, and then, at the last second, as if to spite you, they pull back and go for the Hollywood ending. And then you almost forget the brilliance of the rest of the movie. And any filmmaker that can come close to blocking out the memory of the great parts of his movie with just one crucial scene needs to be beat up. Or have his face shoved into Meat Loaf's man-titties.
But I can mostly forgive David Fincher for leaving that copout ending simply because the rest of the movie is so darn good. This seems to stem mostly from Jim Uhls's close adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's novel, a masterpiece of existentialist grit and wit. The film follows the book through most of its plot, incorporating much of Palahniuk's clever and bitter commentary on our material society into Edward Norton's jaded voice-over narration, which is unnerving for the five seconds it takes to get into the rhythm of the story. That's how good this plot is adapted- we can settle right into a rhythm and a dark tone that match those of the book perfectly.
Edward Norton is the perfect choice for Fight Club's bored protagonist, as is Brad Pitt as Tyler, the enigmatic man that encourages Norton's character to join him in starting a fight club. In this club, men come to the basement of a bar and essentially beat each other up in an attempt to reach into the core of their manhood (the screenplay says it with far more deftness than I do). But it's about so much more than the fight club, as Norton's narrator soon discovers. Tyler has a plan to change the very fabric of their society and in the process changes the very fabric of Norton's character's life- more than he realizes at first.
For the entire movie, Fight Club is about man's slavery to society and his escape from it. Unfortunately, the ending, which I won't spoil, takes an entirely different direction from this theme, and, as a result, takes the movie an entirely different direction from greatness. The ending of the book, however, is perfect, and if Fincher had stuck with the book through the entire first two hours of the movie, why couldn't he use the book's perfect ending for the last 10 minutes?
It's still a must-see though- the ideas expressed by this movie are some everyone should hear and ponder. Plus, it's freaking good entertainment.