I rated it a 10. I read the book, I give it a 4 (mostly because of Ed Norton)

Rating: Null/10 (9 April 2011)

I was impressed by the movie. Dark without being overdone. Bothering to say some stuff. Making some use of the lack of talent shown by Mr. Pitt. Everything seemed so good for a Hollywood production. Yet, something bothered me: Mr. Fincher. He does some moody music videos which compliment the music. This is what he has done in Fight Club also - set the mood and the tempo. Yet, all his other pieces longer than 10 minutes stink beyond the visuals. How come? A director so big and fails short of his objectives? So I finally got myself up to read the book. I read the book. And, in the beginning, there's no director. It's only an illustration of the book - pretty much the same way some nobody is given some out-of-copyright classical novel to direct as a commission from some family TV channel. In the end, the director is nothing than a assistant producer. Once the story in the novel unfolds the changes are more profound. The same way butcher Scott gutted a Ph. K. Dick novel to give a love story in some sort of distant dystopia covered all in the aspartame of SFX, Fincher and his team do bother to tame down the story, everything below the shallow philosophy is ironed out. The only thing that team can be proud of is pulling up that ending that would have been impossible to get past censorship a few years later. But, at the time, there was nothing so special about it, only dumbing down the ending to make sure the silly happy end where hero gets the girl and nothing really happened.
Norton does a good job, that would account for about 3 points, and the fourth is because of the smooth integration of the visuals and soundtrack. Only one point for that last one as it's nothing too hard, even Peter Jackson can do it.
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