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Starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf, Jared Leto.
Directed by David Fincher.
"Cornelius" is an insurance drone who analyses car accidents to determine if it is cheaper to recall cars that are defective, or to multiply the likely number of accident victims by the average cost of settling their lawsuits. Talk about soulless corporate America. He is having trouble sleeping, and begins to attend cancer and disease support groups to experience some kind of feelings, and to have people actually listen to him. He meets Bob (Meat Loaf) at a testicular cancer group, and after hugging he starts to cry. And it makes him feel good. Pretty soon he's able to sleep like a baby. But soon, he meets a woman (Bonham Carter) doing the same thing as him - going to disease groups for diseases he doesn't have. Pretty soon he can't sleep again. On one of his many flights, he meets Tyler. Tyler is a soap maker, part-time waiter and angry young man. Cornelius arrives home to find his condo, with its beautiful Ikea furniture, blown up by a faulty gas stove. He calls Tyler up and moves in with him. But not before punching each other out, at Tyler's request. Both enjoy the experience, and recreate the event every Saturday night. Others join him, and he starts up Fight Club in the basement of the bar. The club flourishes and begins to get bigger. But it doesn't stop at bare-knuckle boxing. Pretty soon he and Tyler have a small army of recruits living with him, and carrying out vandalism and property destruction. And things get out of hand. Fight Club is a metaphor for the alienation of men in the 90's. Like Susan Faludi's new book Stiffed, it suggests men feel useless and aimless. They have soulless, meaningless jobs that bring them no respect or satisfaction. And as the narrator says, people don't really listen to other people anymore unless they're dying. He suggests his life is empty, a continual drive to consume material goods to bring meaning. Men, as well as women, are angry and feel impotent to fix it. Like American Beauty, he hates his job and boss, and blackmails his boss into giving him a lot of money. Although here he has to beat the crap out of himself to do it. I liked Spacey's solution a whole lot better. Tyler recruits men to Fight Club because they want to feel something, even if it's just pain. He tells them they are not unique and beautiful snowflakes. He tells Cornelius the things you own end up owning you, and you can never be free until you've lost everything. He preaches the merits of self-destructiveness as a way to save one's soul and escape the trap of consumerism. There is plenty of humour, and it is consistently twisted. All this might suggest Fight Club is a good film. It isn't. There is little in characterization. All three main characters are stylish caricatures. Tyler posits one has to let go, to not care about anything anymore to truly be free. Well you won't care about these characters either. The story jumps around, albeit with considerable energy, without much care for good storytelling. The film is incredibly violent, with free-flowing blood, broken bones and scarred bodies, but after awhile it has little effect because it looks fake and doesn't feel real. There is a twist that is a genuine surprise. Most will not see it coming. This is primarily because it contradicts most of everything that happened before it. And the film goes through a lot of machinations to try to revise what you saw earlier, to try to explain the twist, but it doesn't really make sense. For me it was a letdown, a manipulation which negated the sincerity of its earlier content. There have been some who suggest this film defines the 90's, a mean decade of downsizing, alienation, selfishness and spiritual emptiness. Well, other films illustrate the same themes, but they are different. They are good films. American Beauty is one which comes to mind. Perhaps I mentioned it before. I'm tempted to spoil the surprise twist, which I try never to do in my reviews, just so you won't see the film just to find out what the twist is. One positive in the film is the performances of the three main actors. Pitt attacks Tyler with relish and a sense of fun. Bonham Carter and Norton are also quite good. But they aren't enough. I missed seeing a Martin Scorsese for this. Now that is a reason to be self-destructive. The first rule of Fight Club is don't talk about Fight Club. Excellent idea, lest someone be encouraged to see it. Don't bother.  
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