Knockout

Rating: Null/10 (20 November 2000)

`Fight Club' confirms David Fincher's status as one of the best of the current directors.
Yes the movie is gross and violent at points, but it is also brilliant. Edward Norton plays the narrator, whose job is to help a major car manufacture determine if it is economically feasible to order a recall of unsafe vehicles. He is an insomniac who attends support groups every night. It seems to be the only way he can feel.
He runs into two persons who will change his life. One is Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), who like him is a `tourist' who attends support groups. A scene in which they divide up which groups to attend is wonderfully played. The other is Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), who seems to be everything that Norton isn't--spontaneous, alive, sexy.
He and Durden form Fight Club, an underground association in which men joyfully beat each other up, then proudly display their cuts and bruises the next day. It is as if the narrator has finally find a way to feel.
There is a twist at the end of the film that is good and unexpected enough to make you want to go back and view the film a second time, a la `The Sixth Sense.' The performances are outstanding. Norton proves that he is one of our best actors, Carter shines in a role different than she has tried before and Pitt successfully finds a way to shed his pin-up status.
Having said all that, I'm still not sure what the film is all about. Is it a satire on cults? The perils of trying to find the ideal self? The inability of people to feel?
In the end, it probably doesn't matter. Fincher keeps the film moving at a fast pace, and like his other movies such as `The Game,' fills each frame with color and detail. In that positive sense, he may be the densest director around. This time he has produced a knockout.