Almost a great movie

Rating: 8/10 (17 August 2000)

This was one of the best movies I've seen all year, but it fell short of being as good as it could have been. I thought the acting by the two important cast members was excellent; I was especially impressed with the development of Ed Norton's character. The movie didn't try and be too deep and wasn't afraid to use humor to keep the story interesting. The characters were somewhat comical, but lent to the story well without being one dimensional and silly.
There were some flaws with this film though. The movie tends to drag at times when they just reinforce an aspect of the movie to make sure you get it. "Tyler's anti-mainstream we get it, move on please"; " "okay. they fight move on please". There are about three long dead spaces like this in the movie. Unfortunately, from the big twist in the story to the end is the worst of these dead times. The movie should have ended right after the twist. The big finale seems irrelevant to the story and forced into the plot. The end seemed like an add-on that was not well explained or had any importance. I can imagine the writers sitting around saying we need to end big, but I don't know how. Just blow something up.
The reason I bring out the negative points is because the Hollywood laziness that plagues the film industry reduced this movie from being a classic to being a really good movie. They had a good story, great acting, and a moment in history for which the message was relevant, but they cut the rope short filled the movie with some dead space and threw together an ending.
In summary it was one of the best movies of the year, but fell short of what it could have been.