Dark, Twisted, Brilliant!

Rating: 10/10 (23 October 2004)

***POSSIBLE SPOILERS*** "Fight Club" is quite simply the paramount masculine, intelligent thriller that succeeds in heavy suspense, engaging perplexity, and stylish, unconventional sequencing, all in dark, murky, and really hideous territory. Here is a film with a theme unashamed to embrace individuality, defiance, and conquest, which actually entertains destruction, mayhem, and madness, and works brilliantly as a study of the extreme effects of insomnia and isolation upon individuals who seek to combat their demons in coming together in an underground battle of hard-knocking, body-blowing punches to relinquish their frustrations on each other. Sounds sordid and demented enough? This doesn't even scratch the surface of this maniacal genius of an unconventional thriller which is as dark and murky as it is insane and prolific.
We are never really introduced to narrator and key player Edward Norton's identity, only that he is constantly comparing himself to a figure named "Jack", perhaps an allusion to the common, labored, frustrated man straining to survive the chaos of American society. Along his quest of "self-discovery" (as one might put it), he is acquainted with Tyler Durden, a knowledgeable, quick-witted soap salesman practically representing the collectedness, confidence, and admiration Edward Norton so desperately desires in his seemingly pathetic existence (as his "alter-ego"), who proposes that he and Norton form a society of fellow frustrated men seeking to relinquish their demons in an underground "Fight Club" (which later becomes the basis for an international group plotting destruction and mayhem). Another notable shadowy and rather belligerent character (and the only female character in the entire film) is Darla, a confused, seemingly ill broad with a grudge against the world and serious suicidal tendencies, who comes in play as the "love desire aid" to Pitt and Norton frequently, and perplexingly, throughout the film.
This is a film whose primary purpose is to perhaps address the effects of frustration, aggravation, and disillusion with the world, and the extent of the extreme, as is characterized by man from society. Norton and Pitt team together to make soap, hang out, run an underground "Fight Club", create domestic terrorist cells, and eventually become mortal nemeses within themselves. What a thought-provoking, brutally honest, and maniacally subtle masterpiece of film-making this "Fight Club" experience is: it's entertaining, suspenseful, inquisitive, and mind-blowingly ingenious, and it's one of the most economic and effective thrillers you'll ever have the privilege to experience. **** out of ****