Warning!!! Possible Spoilers. Read at your own risk!!!

Rating: Null/10 (10 May 2003)

Fight Club, a Chuck Palanhiuk novel converted to a David Fincher film, is the story of a confused young man with no family or close friends who frequents cancer and disease support groups as a way to bond with those less fortunate than him and find sanctity in their suffering. Tired of his dead end, white collar corporate career and disgusted with the vacant consumer culture that his generation has been doomed to inherit, he and a very cunning friend Tyler Durden create a new club where young men come to relieve their frustrations with Western civilization by beating each other to a pulp. Tyler Durden, Fight Club's founder, quickly becomes a cult hero of epic proportions, a sort of neo messiah for a generation lacking direction or purpose in life. What begins as a source of release and a haven of acceptance for those betrayed by society soon spirals out of control into an organization that seeks to terrorize the society the aimless followers of Tyler Durden feel betrayed by. David Fincher's Fight Club is infinitely layered in philosophy. In doing a review for this film it is possible to go extensively in depth with just one of the many ideas densely layered and compacted into one mind-blowing movie. An anti-materialistic ideology is extremely prevalent and blatant, especially when Tyler spouts off quotes like, `The things you own end up owning you,' and the whole `You are not your job..' speech. Another dominant theme of Fight Club is the danger of becoming completely driven by corporate careers. The film focuses on Ed Norton's character 'Jack' who is drowning in capitalism and literally being driven insane by the redundancy of his job. Jack has the rug of his life pulled out from under him when every material object he cherished is destroyed and he is forced to learn to fight for survival. Fight Club most clearly demonstrates the dangers of religion and other wide-scale organizations, and how easily an idea can deviate from its original intentions and become completely degenerate. Jack and Tyler start Fight Club as a means of escape from the modern world, a sort of brutal and primitive church where members get back to the core of life and abandon the frills we are all quite accustomed to having. Even a Catholic priest joins Fight Club and finds himself spiritually rejuvenated by something the Church can't provide. Jack's running commentary reveals that people `were never alive anywhere like they were at Fight Club.' So man now has a new means of achieving `spiritual enlightenment' and the many members of Fight Club now live better, more meaningful lives, right? Wrong. None of the Fight Club members grows stronger or freer because of their membership; they are instead reduced to pathetic cultists. Men joined Fight Club to obtain a sense of release the modern world could not provide. Once members acquired this feeling of being complete and having meaning to their lives, Tyler decided to `take Fight Club up a notch,' to Project Mayhem. Members could then absorb Tyler's profound philosophies in an esoteric manner similar to Tibetan Buddhism, where one must be completely devout and internally learn the `religion' from a high priest or leader (Tyler). What was once a mere source of physical and spiritual release degenerately becomes the basis for a rogue army bent on the destruction of modern civilization. Fight Club wasn't really about saving mankind from the world it had created. It was the means for a madman to create blind faith in him and influence people to act heinously on his behalf.