The IKEA-purchasing, corporate-America lifestyle takes a couple of shots to the head and bleeds profusely in this world where fascist philosophy and pugilistic tendencies meet. “Fight Club” (based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk) makes a wonderful mockery of the worker-bee mentality, crying for an upheaval of consumer culture.
The revolution starts with a group of men who come together in the basement of a bar to beat one another into submission (and brutally so). Jack (Edward Norton) and Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) are the instigators in this scenario of male bonding gone terribly awry.
First, we meet Jack, who determines the cost of traffic accidents for a company so the company knows whether it’s more cost-efficient to recall the cars or to deal with the impending lawsuits. Coming to realize both the purposelessness and the general seediness of what he’s doing, he becomes an insomniac, then a support-group addict, and then he meets Tyler Durden on a plane.
Not only does Tyler sell soap (“the yardstick of civilization”), he begins to sell Jack on another way of thinking. When Jack returns to his apartment and finds it’s been blown to bits, he calls Tyler, the two meet for drinks, and Tyler introduces Jack to what will become the “fight club.”
Slowly, Jack gets drawn into the world that Tyler is crafting for him, which involves a decrepit house with few material goods, fighting more and more, and quickly losing interest in his work. Jack is soon bending to Tyler’s will, even letting Tyler sleep with Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), a woman Jack originally met at the support groups. Meanwhile, word about the fight club begins to spread, and as more men show up, Tyler realizes the power he holds over them. That’s when he starts to up the ante, driving them to acts like vandalism and destruction of property, and eventually toward his ultimate plan, aptly called “Project Mayhem.”
As Jack, Norton cements his status as one of the best actors around, and at the ripe old age of 30 to boot. Not only does he make screenwriter Jim Uhls’ lines resonate, he’s one of the few performers who needs just the subtlest change in his facial expression to illustrate his change in emotion (as in “Primal Fear,” for example). In “Fight Club,” Norton’s Jack is both the central character and the narrator, so while viewers are allowed a glimpse into what he’s thinking, he shows them exactly how he’s feeling.
Pitt, who’s been slapped with the pretty-boy label ever since “Thelma & Louise,” goes toe to toe with Norton and doesn’t back down in his best performance to date. He has a terrific presence on the screen and you believe in his Tyler as someone whom men would beat the crap out of one another to please.
A pleasant surprise is the singer Meat Loaf as Bob, a testicular-cancer sufferer who has absurdly large “man-breasts.” Bonham Carter is in a haze throughout the movie and seems better suited to period pieces.
Fincher, whose previous work includes “Seven” and “The Game,” has a definite style in his directing, one that’s frenetic and jarring. He uses an array of techniques with the camera, ones that, unlike David O. Russell’s in “Three Kings,” work. When Tyler pours lye on Jack’s hand and forces him to endure the agonizing pain, the shakes and jerks of the camera mirror Jack’s and also magnify the moment and the audience’s reaction to it.
Even though the movie over-philosophizes and serves up a flat ending, it’s still an excellent film that deserves to be seen and talked about. And like “The Sixth Sense,” it delivers a terrific plot twist. Seeing it twice might not be a bad idea.