Least understood, most brilliant movie of the last 20 years

Rating: 10/10 (13 January 2002)

This movie captivated me. It explores masculinity in a way all of society seems to have avoided, preferring rather to pretend men don't have violence and passion twisted up inside them, sometimes in horrible ways, more often in beautiful, dying ways.
People have railed about the violence of the movie, and it is close, very close violence, yet only one person dies (less than in _Thelma & Louise_!). The movie is not about violence, yet makes unflinching use of it . . . in many ways, it condemns violence, but doesn't waste breath on that cliche.
This movie succeeds in all the ways _In the Company of Men_ fails, yet transcends the myopic scope of that film. We've watched Thelma and Louise break away, discussed Denise Duhamel's "Barbie" poetry, been startled reading _Reviving Ophelia_, lamented so many difficulties and trials that women in American society face, and yet paid no due to society's asphyxiation of male identity and worth. Fight Club is the most honest, ground breaking movie of the last twenty years.