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Fight Club Customer Reviews (58 - 60 of 146 Reviews)

High on style, low on substance
I'm not a fight fan so I resisted viewing this film for years. Friends told me I would really like it and from a visual point of view they were right. The cinematography is awe inspiring and creative and some of the fight scenes are incredibly graphic and certianly are not for the squeamish. Fight Club is an unflinchingly stunning and stylish film that sucks you in and propells you along its high octane trajectory. Yet when the secret "twist" is revealed, it's a huge letdown that has been done before in countless other films. This is definitely a guy flick, highly entertaining but low on substance. If you're a fighting fan you'll forgive its flaws and love every minute of it. If you're a Brad Pitt fan, you'll forget the plot and drool every minute of it. I am neither so I was mildly entertained but ultimately disappointed. Overall, a really good film but it didn't live up to all the hype surrounding it. I hear the book is better.

Fight Club is a Classic!!!
Where as "Saturday Night Fever" and "Wall Street" perfectly encapsulated the 70's and 80's (respectively) "Fight Club" did the same for the consumer driven, dot-com world of the (late) 90's.

Who of us could not relate to Ed Norton's insomniac, hate-your-job and life character? His frustration for his career is so vivid (and not played for fun, ala "Office Space"), that this is possibly Norton's best performance (considering his body of work that is really saying something).

And Brad Pitt? He was born to be Tyler Durden. Pitt is phenomenal as Durden and commands each scene he is in with such charismatic force, he forever erases the "pretty boy" tags that have been unfairly cast upon him.

While they are often overlooked (in the midst of powerhouse performances by Norton and Pitt), Helena Bonham Carter's Marla Singer is a sympathetic and integral character, as is Meatloaf's Robert "Bob" Paulsen.

As for the violence...it is necessary. David Fincher truly wants all to understand the rage and frustration of Norton's character and all the members of the Fight Club and there was no other way to do it (hell, it is called FIGHT Club!). The film is not as violent as many are lead to believe, and certainly not as brutal or distressing as say Clockwork Orange (which this film is often compared too).

While Fight Club is a masterpiece...it is not for all audiences and some will just not get it. Repeated viewings are recommended to get all the little twists and to get the dark humor (yes...parts are very comical!) and check out all the commentaries (there are 4 different ones).

Last Thought: The best line in Fight Club, "This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time" is a classic one and, while will never enter pop culture mainstream the way lines from "Scareface" or "Sudden Impact, have" it certainly hits home and has more personal relevance than many other tired and overused quotes.

Fight Club is a Classic!!


A mindless amphetamine rush of severely flawed filmmaking
Above all things, it must be said that Fight Club is a very fun movie. It will probably be noted as an important cult film in the future, although I have to disagree with anyone who is predicting "classic" status. Director David Fincher has given us an effective thrill ride, to the point where approximately no one will care that the material could have risen to much greater heights. He has sacrificed the potentially fascinating nature of this story to the gods of MTV-generation sex-crazed macho teenagers. If VH1 had broadened their parameters for their Top 100 Music Videos feature only slightly, it could have been the most notable Top-10 list that this cult fad would ever see.

Unfortunately, as it stands, Fight Club is not a very good movie. Viewers far too hormonal to be bothered with the paltry development of thematic elements and weakness of characterization were quick to jump on their handy buzzwords for movies that they like - "cinematography", "editing", or even "directing", all of which are very easy to confuse with a movie looking cool and moving quickly. Nobody seemed to mind that all three of those artistic elements are tools of filmmaking which, by definition, cannot be successful on their own. All of the exuberant camera work and tricky shots that Fincher pulled off, while entertaining, do not amount to good directing because they are essentially meant to hide the film's material, not strengthen it. The film's cuts are moving so quickly and with such a breathless gusto that Tyler Durden's catchy quotes sound prophetic and brilliant, simply because our minds do not have the time to process them. It takes multiple viewings to realize how cliché and naïve Durden's wisdom actually is. Nuggets like "You're not your ****in' khakis" and "Our Great Depression is our lives" may be penciled across thousands of high school bathroom stalls, but the overbearing cynicism comes up empty when applied to real life.

The real problem with the film is that it blatantly supplements the fantasy of thousands of bored faux-Gen-X'ers; the fantasy that your life is a lot more empty and depressing than it is. It delivers this message in the only language that these people understand: overwrought cinematography and sound bites. Its proposed escape from this invented world of hollowness is (what else?) violence. But the movie is not concerned with the psychology or the implications of violence nearly as much as it is with the visuals. When the movie is over, those who were unfazed by the final act's messy attempt at mind-screwery are so amped up by grandiose visions of bloodied faces and swinging fists that they barely care to figure out the movie's convoluted philosophy. Which is for the better, given that the concept isn't all that fundamentally interesting to begin with.

A masterpiece adapted from Chuck Palahniuk's novel would have been a simultaneous ironic endorsement and searing indictment of the characters' ideals - it could have been the most scathing commentary about our fictionally alienated generation yet put to film. Instead, the film operates as a triumphant rallying cry to its own specific audience, without leaving much of interest for those who are either outside the age/gender range or never had enough unfocused angst to feel the way that these characters do. The best way to treat this movie is to let the MTV-bred fanboys have their fun and just let it go - they may never realize it's a poor movie, but since life is apparently so much meaningless trash, who cares anyway?

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