Fight Club

David Fincher, USA, 1999, 138 mins

Many of you will know that simply by writing this review I am breaking the first two rules of Fight Club. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then you’ve been missing out on one of the best films of the last decade.

Superbly adapted from Chuck Palahniuk's "unfilmable" novel, Fight Club tells the story of an unnamed narrator (Edward Norton), who has it all: a well-paid desk job, a nice apartment, a fine selection of IKEA furniture. Unfortunately, he also feels emotionally void, and as a result suffers from insomnia. His only escape is to attend self-help groups for cancer and disease sufferers, pretending to be dying in order to feel accepted and put his own life into perspective. However, the arrival of another “faker” (Helena Bonham Carter, hilariously playing against type) ruins everything, and the sleeplessness returns.

It is then that our narrator meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt in his best role), an offbeat, anarchistic rebel who stands against everything that he previously believed in. And so the pair set up the Fight Club, the ultimate male empowerment society, where men can prove themselves by beating each other up in dimly-lit basements. The club’s popularity grows exponentially, spreading across the US to the point that Tyler, now an underground cult hero, has an entire army of followers at his disposal. Without our narrator’s knowledge, Tyler moves Fight Club up to the next level – Project Mayhem.

Violent, controversial, thrilling, darkly comic; these are but some of the words that can, and have been, used to describe Fight Club. Its exhilarating, genre-busting mix of drama, action, black comedy and psychological thriller breathed new life into mainstream cinema upon its release, and successfully proved that Hollywood can indeed make great, original films after all. David Fincher’s direction never misses a beat, the acting is universally excellent and the script will undoubtedly make an impact quite unlike any other film you’ve ever seen.

Tyler Durden says - watch Fight Club.

Review by Iain Jackson
Taken from EUFS Programme Spring 2004

Fight Club's narrator has a problem. His job as an accident investigator for an auto company may be financially rewarding, allowing him to live the "Ikea life", but it's also spiritually deadening. Suffering from chronic insomnia, N (a suitably anonymous, quasi-scientific case-study sounding abbreviation) visits his doctor, whose chance remark leads him to a support group for victims of testicular cancer. N soon becomes hooked on such support groups and recognises a fellow "tourist" in other people's suffering in the shape of goth Marla (Helena Bohnam-Carter). They embark on an odd relationship, dividing the nights of the week and support groups up between them.

But the pivotal change in N's life comes when he meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt, modelling a whole line of dodgy clothes). After his apartment is suspiciously blown up N moves into Tyler's squat - a crumbling American gothic style house, which Fincher seems to shoot in a manner reminiscent of Psycho. N soon finds Tyler, with his non-conformist ‘fuck Ikea' attitude, to provide the balance his life had hitherto lacked.

The two men found the "Fight Club" - a place where men can be men by pummelling each other into the dirt - and all is rosy for a time. Then Tyler starts "Operation Mayhem" and N decides he has gone too far. But Tyler disappears...

David Fincher's latest film opens brilliantly. A Se7en-esque credit sequence shifts effortlessly into an image of N with a gun in his mouth and ready to recount to us how he came into this predicament. But while the first half of the film is awash with inventive directorial touches - N's apartment becoming a living Ikea catalogue; flash frame inserts of Tyler foreshadowing his appearance - it quickly goes downhill. The repetitive would-be spectacular and ultra-violent scenes quickly pall and any sense of narrative cohesiveness is lost. Of course this disjointed, self-destructive and schizophrenic feel is probably intentional on Fincher's part. But I couldn't help wondering if he had tried too hard to please everyone and thereby failed. Fincher is, after all, known for compromising his vision for Alien3, while Pitt and Norton are well known for their egoes - c.f. Tom DeCillo's experiences with Pitt in Johnny Suede as reworked in Living in Oblivion and the whole Tony Kaye/Edward Norton struggle over American History X.

But, while not up to the very high standard of Se7en, it would be a mistake to think that Fight Club is a bad film. Rather, it's a bold attempt at adapting a difficult source novel for the screen. I suspect that any director would have experienced difficulties with the subjective/objective image aspect of Fight Club.

Review by Keith H Brown
Taken from EUFS programme spring 2000