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Rating: 10/10 (25 December 2003)

Once I read a critic that states this movie as "a deep inside view in the strange universe of fascist groupuscles in America" . No other view could be more limitated about this astonishing movie. The detail is: I live in Brazil and that critic was a brazilian one. My country is not specially known for having a deep inside about world and existencial matters, but most of the time, they follow the limited tendency of analysing what they see for some ideology, without consider different views about what they are seeing and saying.
I wonder why David Fincher has not much more big hits like this and Seven. First you got some of psychological immersion, with the double personality scheme stressed to the most. Second, you got views about the system against itself: through characters with little plans about their own destiny and lifes...through the creeping details of a job, of a house in decay, of the merchandising abuse. The question before 11/09 was like: What we will do about ourselves ? Where to go ? And this movie thinks exactly about this. Third, and beyond the point just wrote : it got male groups ritualistic discussion. Tribe thing. Somewhat on that remember me the Robert Bly parties but much improved. Violence on the movie is just a vehicle to discuss more important topics, like the role of the male in a society that got no scape exit. That showed no great chances of heroism. And mainly: no answer to the male role anxiety in a world where women became more and more the "heroins".
More than all that it's a movie that discuss philosophy by showing the example. The scene where they menace an official is pure Marx..."we feed you, clean you, take care of you..." and Marcuse " we got jobs we dont want to pay for things we don't need" . This is an exciting minimalism . And all of this is said resentless. Fincher discuss the system but knows very well we'll live inside it.
The final sequence has 2 main questions. The 1st one is somewhat a freudian one and disappointed me. The role of Helen Bonham Carter is like the answer, the easy answer to complex matters. It's like saying sex is the solution to all the problems discussed. It seems like the producers and big hats messing on the final result. Second, the "revolution" made to turn things harder and make people think got a final project somewhat ridiculous. I see this as a strong irony to political groups that like to hyperdimension their roles in life.
It seems that Al-Qaeda members saw this picture and didn't understand specially this final point.