over rated

Rating: 6/10 (31 October 2002)

I was pleased to see that Roger Ebert only rated this movie two stars. It's not bad, and certainly entertaining, but does it deserve to be ranked as high on the IMDb rankings as it is? In my opinion, not a chance, although I was starting to wonder if I was the only one who felt this way.

This film is, among other things, a satire that pokes fun at stuff like support groups, mindless consumerism and overall social conformity (although my view is `American Psycho' did a much better job with the latter two issues). It stars Edward Norton as `Jack'; a corporate drone who, to borrow an overused clichÃ©, basically has no life. Giving credit where due, he is perfect for the role, with a face and personality that, if he were involved in a crime or accident, eyewitnesses would invariably describe as `average'. But all this changes when he meets a rather unusual fellow flying home from a business trip. Tyler Durden, soap salesman (among other occupations) is everything Jack isn't - unconventional, brash, impulsive and seemingly fearless. The two hook up, with Jack feeding off Tyler's manic energy, and their very first night together Tyler suggests they start a fistfight just for the hell of it. Afterward, they both revel in the exhilaration of the experience (neither man had ever been in a fight before) and in due time they form `Fight Club', hence the title of the movie. What is `Fight Club'? It's an underground organization where young men fight each other as a form of therapy, or to just give them something exciting to relieve their otherwise dull and pointless lives. Jack's personality changes to more closely resemble Tyler's, he becomes more confident, in fact, downright aggressively so, as shown in a scene where he blackmails his boss about halfway through the film. Eventually the two's ambitions outgrow Fight Club, and they plan something much bigger, namely Project Mayhem, a plot to bring down major companies nationwide, all of which culminates in a somewhat bizarre plot twist at the end, one which will go unmentioned since it shows the actual nature of Jack and Tyler's `partnership' and is thus a major spoiler.
Is this movie worth watching? It definitely is energetic and imaginative, but it's also chock full of pretentious pop philosophy, with dialog like `The things you own end up owning you' and `It's only after we have lost everything that we are free to do anything'. It might fulfill every closet anarchist's fantasies about `bringing down the system', but in the end, it is simply about the substitution of one kind of conformity for another. The members of Fight Club and, later, Project Mayhem, are, in reality, far more robotic than the `corporate clones' this movie purportedly makes fun of. Tyler is just another example of an infantile jerk being made into some sort of existential hero simply because he's a non-conformist, not because he actually has anything worthwhile to say. Once you get past the bravado, you find there's really nothing there. Thanks to Tyler, Jack may have found a passion and a purpose in life, but not for doing anything that actually makes the world a better place. In short, this film lacks the courage to rise above the morass of cynicism and nihilism that unfortunately has too strong a grip on modern American culture. As noted, this movie is not without its good points, the acting is uniformly solid, it throws some intriguing ideas at us, but its `message' ultimately falls flat.

6/10