Promising Start, Mediocre End

Rating: Null/10 (16 November 1999)

This movie is almost as schizophrenic as the lead character, played by Ed Norton, is. The beginning is very promising with intelligent themes of the evils of excess consumerism but then it fizzles and turns into a simple action/suspense flick.
Norton, the narrator, is a disgruntled office employee plagued by insomnia. He is fed up with the monotony in his work and his social life. He sees our society as one that forces its citizens to waste day after day at work so they can buy things they don't need, but corporations say they do. Norton goes through his life in a haze of boredom and mediocrity due to his insomnia -- as he said, "With insomnia you're never really asleep, and you're never really awake."
To stave off his feelings of detachment Norton begins to go to various self-help groups even though he has no noticeable defects (at first anyway). Seeing people with severe problems (he frequents cancer patient forums mostly) he begins to realize that maybe his life isn't so bad and he begins to sleep again. That is until he meets the vixen Marla Singer who is also addicted to self-help groups. Because she doesn't need the therapy, he sees her as a phony. Soon he sees himself in her and, unable to tolerate her presence, he quits going to group.
With no outlet Norton relapses into his depression. That is until he meets Tyler Durden played by Brad Pitt (who almost looks like a bodybuilder in this role). Anyway, to move things along, Norton's condo is destroyed by an explosion and he's forced to move in with Durden and they subsequently start beating up on each other for thrills.
Their fights become a form of therapy for Norton. He crawls out of his depression and begins to feel a sense of worth. In the process he and Durden recruit other fighters who enjoy the "therapy," and Fight Club begins to take off.
Humorous scenes abound when Norton begins to go to work with black eyes and bloody lips and his white-collar counterparts are stunned by his appearance. But unfortunately, the movie reaches its peak here and begins to go downhill fast.
I won't comment too much on the last half or so of Fight Club because, well, I don't think it's worthy of mention. I'll just say this, there is a very strange schizophrenic twist toward the end, but I don't think it's believable. We've all heard the saying that goes something like this: "You know a mystery is good when you have some sort of idea of how it's going to end or who the culprits are." Well, the twist in Fight Club does not fit precisely because it comes by such a surprise. It's almost as if the producers had to meet a deadline so they threw in a few subplots to fill reel space.
Although fight club was somewhat of a bust for me I did take away two nice morals: excess consumerism and excess therapy (especially Norton's version) are bad things.