A Real Downer

Rating: 8/10 (20 January 2001)

David Fincher's "Fight Club" is a disturbing film, but being a David Fincher film, you expect it be. In a nutshell, Edward Norton plays a twenty-something white-collar guy drowning in the humdrum shallowness of yuppie life. Enter free spirit Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), who is the opposite of the Edward Norton character, and knows how to turn his life around. Together they create a club of like-minded males who meet in fetid barroom basements and conduct savage bare-knuckle fights just for the fun of it. It addicts them to violence; soon their lives revolve around the club. It's not just them, there are young men everywhere locked into low-pay dead-end jobs for whom smashing faces is just the antidote. The club spreads like wildfire and begins to take on fascistic military overtones. And then there's a plot twist that will blow your mind. Sadly, two major flaws seriously drag down what should have been an excellent film. First, the amazing plot twist at the end of the movie (on par with that in "The Sixth Sense") doesn't seem to have the serious adherence to it's rules that the plot twist in "The Sixth Sense" had. (I must admit I've only watched the movie once). The other is that the fascistic, nihilistic, and misogyny of the film is actually celebrated, not ridiculed as many advocates of this movie assert. This disturbs me a lot, especially when you remember that IMDb reviewers rank it #40 on the all time favorites list. That's a bummer.