Bloated, irresponsible, self-indulgent trash!

Rating: 1/10 (31 October 2000)

Typically over-directed David Fincher nonsense.Is he actually able to direct a movie that isn't dank, grimy and depressing? There are way to many people out there who hold this claptrap in too high regard. Perhaps they confuse the muddled and self-congratulatory rubbish that is the plot for something deep and meaningful.
I found that this film scrapes the bottom of the barrel for reasons to be cynical and faithless. It became increasingly obnoxious and irritating. Edward Norton's character had the most annoying voice and the constant ugly imagery turned me off totally. If this film wanted to poke fun at our society then why did it only show all the ugly parts. Granted, there is a lot of fake, unnatural beauty out there but a helluva lot of this world is still free and nice to look at. Not everywhere is a dull, grey office or a miserable, rainy alleyway.
It is also very, very slow. 139 minutes have never seemed so long.A lot of this film could have been cut out and still there would be no MAJOR difference to the story I like the idea that everyone is part of the same gang and by sticking together they can easily bring down modern society. This should have been exploited more. But we only get about 4 or 5 scenes of their antics. But, the whole thing of the gang becoming fascists in their attempt to stop fascism is lost on me. I didn't find it ironic, subtle or meaningful. Sorry.
The sub-text about man becoming primal again, and releasing all the rage created from jobs that insult their intelligence and ruin their lives, is lost on me too. It's practically non-existent. I have never been let down so much by a movie that was hyped as being exciting. It was really rather boring.
The DVD has a loads of features, annoying and headache inducing. Why did Fox insist on a dozen little featurettes instead of one healthy hour-long documentary? The menus are confusing as is the multi-angle function on the 5-minute "scene deconstructions". Who on earth is going to watch all of these 2 or 3 times just to see the different angles and bad camcorder shots of someone working on a computer? The movie itself is in Dolby 5.1 and is anamorphically enhanced at 2.40:1.