Disturbing

Rating: Null/10 (20 November 1999)

Fight Club is impossibly negative and depressing, but many won't care. There's a message somewhere in Fight Club but if you really get off on screen violence, well, so what.
Fight Club is very well made, so well produced that it's disturbing. Everyone will enjoy it on that level. But will you send their mates along to grovel in the violence?
There are some delicious moments of black humour but the overall feel of Fight Club just isn't funny. It's Falling Down grown up. It's Mortal Kombat with real mortal combat. It's an Artless Raging Bull.
It's apocalyptic if you take it seriously enough. But for most of the population Fight Club will be just a good ol' parade of blood and smashed teeth.
Fight Club contends that many American males these days have become so bored and ground down by paying the mortgage in an essentially meaningless society that they have become pathologically desperate.
And for a moment I believed it. You'd have to! There's a call to arms at one stage, the mantra is recited in the bowels of Fight Club World. The thugs were mesmerised and so was I. There it was. Fanaticism. Madness. A boys club with sharp teeth.
A visionary and bully called Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) starts forming secret clubs where men meet for vicious fights. Men flock to the Fight Clubs because they find that the pain and solidarity they find there bring meaning to their lives.
Soon Durden is forming an army of disenchanted men who are willing to follow his anarchistic programs. Durdan plans to rip society apart, destroy commerce and ruin order.
We're never told what Durdan envisages might come from this chaos, but you wouldn't expect much from organised thugs, would you.
There is a secret but as I've said Fight Club isn't really about the philosophy of political systems or about run-amok commercialism. Fight Club is about violence and grot. It's about boys (not girls) getting their shirts off, forgetting about Mum and bashing the hell out of each other.
The stars give superb performances. Edward Norton (Primal Fear, American History X) plays Narrator with the intensity and intelligence we've come to expect from him. Brad Pitt is strong in a film which seems to suit him admirably. (Perhaps that's a worry!)
Helena Bonham Carter, escaped from English costume dramas for a change does a good job of slumming it as Marla Singer, although a million actresses could eat up that sort of overacting.
Meat Loaf with bitch tits is just fine as the slobbing, sobbing Big Bob but I was mesmerised mostly by the slashing direction by David Fincher (Aliens 3, Seven). His use of sound in particular was superb.
Fight Club is essentially what was called a few years ago an Action Movie, but a very well made action flick. Violence rules, damn the plot, particularly philosophy.
There are a couple of ideas hidden by a thick smear of blood, outstanding production values and it does closely mirror Chuck Palahniuk's novel. But hell if I want to be depressed I'll watch the news.
Meanwhile men pleasing themselves in their own Fight Club, kicking in heads on Shields Street on a Friday night, scream "we are the news!".