Powerful thought and emotion behind the violent exterior

Rating: 9/10 (1 February 2001)

This movie is extremely hard to define and is certainly not a movie to be seen only once. When I first saw it, I would classify it as a simple action/suspense/thriller movie, fairly entertaining but nothing special. The difference between this reaction and the reaction I got from seeing it a second time is astronomical.
Edward Norton does an excellent job playing the unnamed narrator, a man who has a steady job, a nice apartment, a stable life...and is beginning to realize that it is all meaningless, that he is a by-product of the corporate society, that he is not really living at all. Enter Tyler Durden, an independent rebel who identifies immediately with the narrator and by his nonconformist lifestyle that things do not have to be this way, that he can reject the cookie-cutter "perfect life" and instead make his life mean something--to stop living as society would have him live and not care about the reactions he gets.
I've been told that this is a "guy" movie, but a look at the breakdown of user ratings here will tell you otherwise. Despite the bare-knuckle boxing and action, this is not a "guy" movie, nor is action its focus. This movie is about rebellion against a stagnant society, against living a life without purpose. Tyler Durden carries these ideas to the extreme, and the results are clear. However, I submit that this movie suggests that the opposite extreme is equally bad, if not worse.