A cinematic plurality of unmitigated violence and delusion.

Rating: Null/10 (26 November 1999)

My first, gut reaction after wading through the blood and bandages of Fight Club came to me outside the theatre when I could breathe once again: Censor it. Ban it. Burn it.
Once again American Directors (we certainly can not blame Hollywood for everything) with a penchant for amalgamating an underlying homoerotic theme with baseless, suicidal violence has produced another offshoot of cinematic corruption: Fight Club. Director David Fincher could neither marry a well balanced theme with a sturdy script about an unbalanced male (Edward Norton) and our sexual diablo/dream merchant-of-destruction (Brad Pitt) without giving us a Killing Field of violence so horrid, so graphic and so unbelievable that you wince every time a fist is raised in anger. Fincher has a good idea in the beginning of the film with Norton's lust for self-worth in the ubiquitous 12-step program. This could have been developed. Should have been developed.
Instead, we are thrust into a sweaty parade of brain-dead muscled toughs who lack self actualization (and common sense) to beat hell out of each other. Written into the "theme" was an unbuttoned commando-style military operation against a reich of credit card companies who must be made to pay, say the director (after all the actors must adhere to what the film fuhrers dictate) or else Brad Pitt and troop would be unable to watch an American Express commerical without going postal. The rightousness of the operation was, "the end justifies the means" and the director has then established the justification for unwarranted violence against the city controllers -- all of whom "will pay."
In the best traditions of Oliver Stone's disturbing Natural Born Killers, Fight Club gives us nothing new, nothing effervescent, nothing challenging. We are fed the usual trinity of violence, sex, and dream-like innuendo in a movie, so devoid of theme and story that we are unable to comprehend exactly whats coming next. We can neither enter into the movie or tag along with it. We certainly can't weep or feel sorry for anyone -- and with the absence of a "hero" -- there is nothing left to do but grip the sides of your seat and grind your teeth as lawlessness reigns supreme in the land. Didn't they draw and quarter the Greek playwrights in Athens for presenting productions like this?
Fight Club is a movie we do not need in our day and age. If teen violence, coupled with the troubled state of affairs of an even younger generation are being blamed for thematic approaches in film-making, the American viewing public must vote with its dollar to reject it. Fight Club glamorizes violence (where NBK glamorized murder) and feeds nothing to our psyche except....more. More mind-numbing fist-to-cuffs where people are beaten so graphically on screen, we no longer wince, but accept it as part of life.
The mental state of the directors and screen writers who produce such material must be suspect. However, we can't condemn them for trash, although, certainly some directors will rebound with flair and produce creations that win awards.
Fight Club deserves nothing but our anger, revulsion and pity. What else could such a blood bath exhibit from us? If we are supposed to emote during film, are we supposed to be enthralled at a holocaust of exhibition that our mental judgement rejects it whole heartedly? If so, then the viewers opinion is then suspect. Do our viewers beleive that Fight Club is truly a film about two men who beat hell out of each other and then join forces to fight the system? If this is certainly true, then David Fincher and other directors have not pushed the envelope further. If Fight Club is not the end of such films, dear viewer, be ready for upcoming visual demonstrations of child molestation, rape of women, extermination of the marginalized (at least those the directors find reproachable and therefore game) because you have certainly seen nothing yet.