Knockout

Rating: Null/10 (21 September 2001)

* * * * (4 out of 5)

Fight Club

Directed by: David Fincher, 1999

A surprising, glamorized and visceral pop-culture feast by David Fincher (Alien3, Se7en, The Game) based on the writings of Chuck Palahniuk. Alternative only in style (Fincher all the way), Fight Club is really just another coming-of-age movie along the lines of American Beauty (1999).

While it's sensibilities are none too deep there's still plenty too get excited about. Both Brad Pitt and Edward Norton deliver some pounding performances and Helen Bonham Carter is a slick cartoon slut come to life. Fincher's visual style leaves you pinned in your seat - he simply rubs you raw - and Fight Club screams for repeat viewing to catch the subtleties and re-experience the plot twists.
The funny - and true - thing about Fight Club is that it actually works and comes full circle against impossible odds.
Criticized for almost everything when it was released; the whiny and infantile philosophizing (courtesy of the narrator and the machine-gun pep-talks by Pitt), the hefty blood n' guts routines of the bare-knuckle brawls, the general gung-ho testosterone filled outlook on life and the fact that it offers no answers to the muddled ideology it preaches, Fight Club got as much of a rough beating in the press as it served up itself.

But the issues in Fight Club - primarily the sheer desperation of the shuttering male angst - can never be deemed vacuous because they are genuine signs of our times and to depict them this colorfully and with this much energy, anger and invention is frankly entertaining as hell.