Amazing!

Rating: Null/10 (31 July 2000)

This is one of the best movies I've ever seen. I hate to say that about something that was just made mere months ago, because it makes me sound shallow, but it's true. Every single frame is just filled to the brim with such startling originality that it's like an ultra-violent, philosophical Being John Malkovich. Not very many films greet you with a man crying into another man's breasts.
All I knew about the film was that it was about a club where men gather to beat each other into a bloody pulp as a way of perging themselves of that nasty taste work leaves in their mouths. That's just as well, as the less you know beforehand, the better. At first I was dissuaded by the opening credits, which are filled with completely gratuitous CG. This would make one think they were about to watch an "MTV style" movie, which I despise...Armageddon and Natural Born Killers are like what Satan would make if given a camera. And then the movie starts, and again I wasn't very excited...another movie that starts at the end, and thinks it's clever. But then it REALLY starts, and I was immediately entranced by its world of social satire and its depiction of materialistic losers. I was a big fan of American Psycho, and I enjoyed these scenes in much the same way, especially the line about how the Narrator would rather look at the IKEA catalog than porn. Than he falls in with the Fight Club. That is all I'll tell you about the plot.
Back to that style thing...I loved it. It seems like it could get gratuitous or overdirected at any minute, but it never quite crosses that boundary. It stays hyperactive enough to keep you interested, but subdued enough to let you enjoy what you're watching. Its 2 hours and 20 minutes seem to flash by in a second, until the ending. It's also VERY violent. The beatings are extremely brutal, especially the accompaniying sound effects, and there are two gun shot wounds so gruesome I'd love to know what they bribed the MPAA with to avoid an NC-17. I wasn't bothered by it, but I'm sure lots of people will be.
And as for the ending, this is where the film faltered. There's a twist, yes, but that's not the problem. It's a good twist, like in American Psycho, where it actually adds to what's been seen before, rather than films like The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense, which just tack the endings on to encourage second viewings (they DO both deserve second viewings, but only because they're good movies). The problem is the scenes after the surprise is revealed. Up to this point we've been treated to a film that gives us something we've never seen before in scene after scene, and then it all gets wrapped up with...two normal fights? What happened? There are two battles here, one physical, one psychological, and they're far too normal to be here...they belong in a typical action movie. And come on, a bomb diffusion? With the "which color wire" scene and everything? Puh-leeze. Save it for a Van-Damme flick. This was the only point where I started to get restless.
There's a whole anarchistic philosophy behind the film, which I loved. I didn't buy into it or believe it, mind you, but I loved it...no matter if you believe in something or not, you have to give credit to someone who can think it up in the first place. The script is so jam-packed with great dialogue that this is a film that will be endlessly quotable, like Kevin Smith doing Nietzsche.
Like I said, everything is filled with originality, right up to the final shot that has a subliminal frame of...well, you'll understand once you find out about Tyler's hobbies :) See it. Now.