Edgelord ego fuel

Rating: 1/10 (7 July 2016)

I can't stand this movie. In and of itself, it's just a mediocre male power fantasy movie for privileged adolescents who feel misunderstood. However, too many grown men take this movie seriously and fawn over its wholly unremarkable and tedious semi-philosophical implications. In fact, I would recommend using this movie as a metric to avoid obnoxious people before you become too involved with them.
The movie takes nearly two and a half hours to say "work sucks!!! no one pays attention to me at the office!!! everyone around me is a chump!!!" which would be just fine except that the movie is so incredibly misogynistic. The only woman in the movie with any role in the plot is Helena Bonham Carter's character who exists solely as an object of Edward Norton's fantasies. This kind of narrative is entirely unnecessary and at best mind numbingly boring (if not dangerous to an individual's perceptions of women and femininity). The values and glorifications in this movie are toxic and shallow.
Not to mention how utterly unbelievable this whole story is. Why in the world would grown men want to just spend their time fighting each other? Why would a group of guys leaving a bar want to join in a fight that they came across in the street? Why would men who did enjoy fighting make the whole affair into a nihilistic cult? None of that is ever explained; we're meant to take for granted that men would just be interested in fighting for no discernible reason other than they're unhappy with their employment and credit scores.
This movie was made by and for pretentious self involved clowns and an undeniable waste of time.