come out of the theater reeling

Rating: Null/10 (24 October 1999)

Wow! When I left the theater after seeing this movie I felt like I had just been punched silly myself! TOO MUCH fighting in this film...hello, we got the message after the first few rounds!
Very uneven and in some places redundant, still this movie is intriguing and thought-provoking. To me, the best part was the very beginning when Edward Norton is attending the support groups and, in my opinion, a whole film could have been created out of just that premise. But suddenly he meets Tyler and the movie takes a radical turn.
This is obviously a film for film-makers, as there are so many self-indulgent references and enough camera turns to give the average viewer vertigo. It is dark and there are so many splattering faces, car wrecks and falls through glass that after awhile you give up trying to figure out how these guys could have actually survived such intense punishment. It is propagandist and delivers its message over and over, pounding OUR heads into the concrete so that we will see what materialist schmucks we all are if we work at a normal job and have a condo and furniture. For all these negative reasons, I could only give this movie a 6, but I would still say "Go see it". It's a reel experience.