"This is your roving reporter at the ringside..."

Rating: 8/10 (31 December 1999)

"You join us tonight for a title bout that I've really been looking forward to. Two grand fighters, The Narrator (who looks similarly like Edward Norton) and Tyler Durden (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Brad Pitt). I must confess to missing the first two minutes of the match as I stopped off to get popcorn, so I as enter the ringside I find the fight is already well underway.
ROUND ONE: Norton leads the show as a man addicted to self-help groups. This puts his initial sparring on a shaky, slightly unbelievable footing, where his overstated jabs of ironic juxtaposition never really seem to hit the target. He runs round the ring stealing dream sequence and overlaid narrative tactics from recent championship matches, particularly the recent Trainspotting vs. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels title fight. It's a shock that he would borrow heavily from some English fighters, but we must remember that the backer behind this clash is David Fincher. Fincher has worked well with English fighters before, most notably when they had their guts eaten out in Alien3.
ROUND TWO: Norton continues to lead, and from the horrified looks on the judge's faces his pseudo-literary, semi-pretentious dialogue is a little too strong for so early on in a fight. Yet Norton is giving his all as the morose, nerdy, slightly monotone clerk and all the effort is there to see - in fact I've never seen such savage hitting.
ROUND THREE: Pitt has begun to put up a bit of a fight, his boxing style an odd clash of macho thuggery and streetwise intelligence. However, his slightly effeminate tone of voice means he's not really pulling this particular style off, and it could cost him the match. Doubters at the edge of the auditorium, though, should be reminded that he pulled off such a style in Kalifornia, and he stole that bout clear away from David Duchovny. Yet it must be said that to win this fight he has to give it a lot more edge.
ROUND FOUR: The style of the match has changed, as Norton and Pitt have decided to set up their own underground "fight club", where the reality of living is confirmed by the feel of pain and physical violence. Here Pitt really starts to rule the ring, knocking Norton back into a rope-a-dope by introducing to the match a subtle homoerotic subtext that Norton did not see coming. I really believe this could be the end of the match, especially as Pitt follows up this vicious assault by showing off his six-pack and sleeping with Helena Bonham-Carter.
ROUND FIVE: The fight seems to be flailing in all directions now, the spectators being forced to pay attention by the displays of violent bloodletting with an art-house style, yet wondering how long Pitt can keep up his new ruse - overstated moralising and plot justification. It's anyone's fight now and we just hope they can stay the distance.
ROUND SIX: Pitt has started to lose his edge here, and tries a "surprise twist" uppercut, yet Norton, like the rest of the audience, has seen it coming a mile off and effortlessly ducked from the swing. But wait - what's this? Pitt has delivered a second "surprise twist" uppercut, and this time NO-ONE saw it coming! Norton is down for the count! Never have I seen such a format-changing conceit in a mainstream bout - this has completely changed the whole face of the fight, and Norton is spending all his time trying to stay awake, reeling from one situation to another and bouncing off the ropes. Suddenly this has turned into a fight to remember.
ROUND SEVEN: There's really nothing left of this match now, though Pitt does well with neat little jabs like showing off a billboard sign for Seven Years in Tibet, the bout that saw him flop both in the ring and at the titlematch box-office. There's also mention of the horror of sitcoms, and as we all now Pitt's girlfriend stars in one of those, leaving Norton no room to manoeuvre amongst Pitt's self-referentiality. Norton flails around with trying to overstate the "ironic" humour once more in the match, but Pitt has justified the entire bout with this final display. As Norton hits the canvas, this is not up to the standards of classic matches, such as the Rumble in the Jungle between Rashomon and The Maltese Falcon, but is still a fight that I think a lot of people are going to be interested in seeing and are going to be talking about for a long time to come. I thought this match was going to be won on points (8/10), but in the end, I have to declare it very much a knockout".