Disturbingly excellent!

Rating: 9/10 (8 March 2002)

"Fight Club" by David Fincher is really the first movie since American Psycho to deal with "generation X" (in lack of a better name). And as the book by Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho) was so very provocative and too violent for its time, so is Fight Club.
The two main characters, "I" (later known as "Jack") and "Tyler Durden" are portrayed by Edward Norton and Brad Pitt. Both actors become their characters, and they're very convincing as the fragile, generation x insomniac (Norton) and the cool, easy-going, care-less, soap-making Tyler Durden (Pitt). But it is really Helene Bonham-Carter who steals the limelight with her role as Marla Singer, who just as "Jack" has nothing really to live for, and who manages to stay alive only by going to cancer-groups and such for dying people. See the irony?

Much can be said of the movie (and it certainly has been!), but as I see it, it is able to open the eyes of an entire generation who goes through life thinking materialism is the way to live. If it does not open your eyes, you may just think this movie is about violence, when, in fact, only one person dies in the film. The movie is not about violence at all. The violence is a way of escaping the life the characters are leading - a life which is so empty and only based on stuff...things we don't need to be happy.
The ending sees everything coming together for the audience - and everything falling apart for the main character. Do you dare watch?