American Psycho: Lions Gate Films/ Warner Bros. Rating: USA: R/ UK: 18/ Australia: R
Prior to its 1991 release, Bret Easton Ellis’ novel American Psycho had already garnered its fair share of controversy. The book, which uses the baroque and over-the-top murders committed by its 27-year old protagonist, Patrick Bateman, as a scathing commentary on both the 80’s yuppie subculture and the whole "greed is good" credo, was denounced for its misogynistic violence against women. The public outrage caused Simon and Schuster publishing to drop the book (while allowing Ellis to keep his considerable advance)—which was then picked up by Vintage and eventually released. The book has been revered and reviled by critics and the masses alike—most of whom fail to realize that the novel is little more than a cleverly conceived satire. And now, nine years after its initial publication, Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol) has brought the book to the big screen—with surprisingly good results.
Christian Bale (Swing Kids, A Midsummer Night's Dream) stars as Patrick Bateman, the Jekyll and Hyde ‘hero’ of the film. Bateman is an intriguing character—literally a personification of the banality of evil--moving through life as little more than an empty shell at the mercy of his murderous impulses. For Bateman, life is little more than an endless stream of elaborate gourmet dinners at fancy restaurants, designer clothes, the quest to acquire the perfect business card, rough sex, and violent murder—not particularly in that order. Bateman is the living embodiment of the mid-80’s Wall Street culture—a young, disaffected urbanite who is driven to excess because it’s ultimately the only way he feels anything. He’s shallow, self-centered, and incredibly full of himself (as witnessed through the hilarious dissertations that he gives on 80’s pop music acts like Whitney Houston, Genesis, and Huey Lewis), and probably not too unlike corporate raider Michael Milken when he was that age.
The film and the novel don’t have a linear plot in the traditional sense. While Harron and collaborator Guinevere Turner manage to give the film a fairly consistent narrative throughline, the film and the novel still play like a series of interconnected snapshots more than a traditional story. The movie follows Bateman for an undisclosed length of time, letting us in on his skin care regimen, showing him interacting with his peers (all who are completely interchangeable), his girlfriend (Reese Witherspoon: Election), the girl he’s having an affair with, and his victims. We’re treated to all aspects of Patrick’s existence—including his constant, and unheeded, confessions to those around him. It’s an all access pass into the life of a madman—and it makes for some incredibly compelling viewing.
What little plot the film does manage to string together involves Bateman’s murder of co-worker Paul Allen (Jared Leto: Fight Club, Thin Red Line). Bateman has dinner with Allen, gets him drunk, invites him to his home, then hacks him to pieces with an axe. He then concocts an elaborate scheme to make it appear as though Allen has left for England. Allen’s girlfriend hires a detective (Willem Dafoe: Existenz) to investigate the disappearance. Dafoe’s character questions Bateman on several occasions, but concludes that Allen is indeed in England (since people claim to have seen him there)—making the viewer wonder if the murders are actually for real or figments of Bateman’s imagination.
Bale does a fantastic job of filling the lead role. Bateman’s a psycho, but he’s an entertaining sociopath given to manic fits and bouts of extreme confusion. Bale brings the character to life and demonstrates that he’s more than capable of carrying the entire film on his shoulders. It’s a performance guaranteed to garner him a cult film fan base, if not actual stardom. Dafoe is suitably odd as Kimble, the detective, and everyone else does a fine job of being the interchangeable yuppie characters they’re supposed to be.
Harron’s direction is also surprisingly good. I didn’t think she’d be able to pull the film off (especially after hearing that much of the book’s violence was going to be cut), but she demonstrates a definite ability to write and film black comedy. The script stays very faithful to the novel (keeping whole chunks of the original dialogue) and it actually translates to the screen quite well.
Harron manages to fill the film with some great imagery, most of it in the violent scenes. There’s the hilarious sequence where Patrick prepares to murder Allen—dancing around the room in a raincoat with an axe in his hand, as well as a cool scene where naked, blood-spattered Bateman chases a hooker through the hallways of an apartment building with a chainsaw in hand.
While the film eschews a lot of the book's more infamous murder sequences (including the one with the nature trail and a starving rat), the ones that do get included are fairly gruesome. American Psycho features some great onscreen carnage including numerous stabbings, the axe murder, a chainsaw killing, and several gunshots to the head. Gore fans should be more than pleased with the grue in the film.
However, the MPAA had a real problem with the sex. The film features several threesomes, one of which had to be cut no less than three times to garner an R rating. Funny that the MPAA has no real problem with graphic violence, yet any kind of sex really upsets them.
Ultimately, American Psycho is a very pleasant surprise—a film adaptation of a book I love that manages to capture most of the novel’s mood and feel. I went into this one expecting the worst and was rewarded with a fairly faithful adaptation that entertained me for over an hour and a half. People who hated the novel will most likely despise the movie too, but if you’re a fan of gore films, scathing black comedy, or Bret Easton Ellis’ work then American Psycho is well worth checking out.
Patrick Bateman, a young, well to do man working on wall street at his father's company kills for no reason at all, collects body parts and displays t...More at HotMovieSale.com
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