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Fight Club Customer Reviews (115 - 117 of 146 Reviews)

Fight Club is a well made knockout, albeit disappointing
Despite the fact that Fight Club is well made, laced with grand visuals, an intriguing character study, and chockfull of black comedy, it is awfully disappointing. The film's first act is wonderful, but midway through the movie has jarring shifts of tone, loses track of where it is going, and becomes careless and awkward in its storytelling. The film turns from what could have been a four-star--or even five-star--movie into nothing more than a celebration of violence, unpleasantness, and heavy-handed movie making.

The central character of Fight Club is a man known in the credits only as 'Narrator' (played by Edward Norton). Norton's character is a disaffected, insomniac office worker whose life, to him, is empty. To assuage his troubles, he attends 12-step group therapy meetings to observe people whose problems are worse than his own. One of the other odd idiosyncrasies of Norton's character is that he purchases unusual furniture for his home, such as a round table with a giant yin-yang painted onto the table's surface. (A great scene takes place at this part of the movie in which a tracking shot of his living quarters showcases his furniture with a catalog-like description of names and prices written beside each item).

At one particular 12-step meeting, Norton's character meets Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter). Marla is like the Narrator in that she relieves herself of stress via the meetings even though she doesn't have the problems that the meetings are meant to mend. Marla's attendance of the meetings frustrates the Narrator and turns his life back into the unmanageable lifestyle he lived before he discovered group therapy.

Soon afterward, the Narrator meets a man named Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) on an airplane. The Narrator has seen images of Durden in his head, but has never seen him in reality. The Narrator finds that Durden lives life on the edge, and they soon find "friendship" after the Narrator's high-rise apartment is set aflame. The Narrator seeks shelter in Durden's decrepit house, and the two eventually start a chain of 'Fight Clubs.' These clubs are underground meetings where angry guys flock to beat the living daylights out of each other in brutal bare-knuckle fights in order to find highly extreme 'therapy' and 'self-realization.' As these organizations burgeon throughout the nation, Durden's agenda becomes more ambitious and mysterious, and Durden also begins to have a relationship with Marla. This is where the movie loses its wittiness, intelligence and originality to turn into a meandering movie about nothing more than brutality.

It takes a lot to offend me in a movie, but the second and third acts of Fight Club are so strangely questionable and so over-the-top in their images and plot elements of terrorism and violence that I felt rather offended. Scenes that glorify killing and destruction are amplified to the point where we cannot help but reminisce about unsettling current events pertaining to death and destruction (It should be noted, however, that Fight Club is a pre-9/11 film). In addition, the amplification of violence in this film ruins the movie's message of 'don't follow Durden's philosophy of life' to the point where the movie almost becomes hypocritical.

The second and third acts of Fight Club are also highly boring and meandering. Not only did this movie not know where to go, but it didn't know what it was. Fight Club didn't know if it was a comedy, a satire, an action flick, or a tragedy. Furthermore, the ending is inept and overblown. The ending of this movie tries to work in the same fashion as the endings of The Sixth Sense and The Usual Suspects, in that it tries to twist the plot in such a way that the whole story is completely changed. With The Sixth Sense and The Usual Suspects, this innovative plot twisting works, but with Fight Club it simply does not.

Even though Fight Club has its imperfections, it does compensate with some excellent filmmaking. The movie is fluidly--and often flamboyantly--filmed and contains some great visuals. Also, Norton's performance is excellent as the man filled with angst to the point where life's smallest burdens corrupt him. Viewers should watch for a particularly unsettling scene in which Norton's boss finds the rules of "Fight Club" lying next to the printer in his office.

Fight Club, adapted by Jim Uhls from Chuck Palahniuk's cult novel and directed by David Fincher, is a gritty and vicious film that lacks redemption. Its putrescence is compensated by its more positive aspects, even though it will only be enjoyed by some and not all. It is the sort of movie that people must see in order to form their own opinions, while at the same time, a movie that thinks it's philosophical. David Fincher is a good director (Fincher's past work includes The Game and Se7en), but it seems he wants Fight Club to be a test of endurance more than he wants it to be truly great.

Not 6.1 Sound and about an hour too long......
I purchased this special edition thinking it would have 6.1 sound to drive my rear speakers. Even though many sites indicate there is 6.1 sound, it is not so. This movie runs about an hour too long. The twist is given away early in the movie on the airplane "Hey, I have the same briefcase". I found this movie boring and resold it used, at a minimal loss. I could barely make it through the movie and did not waste any time on the commentaries. This rates with The Mexican on my sleep list. Seven is much better and has much better sound....

Fight Club
This is one of my favorite movies. The cinematography in great. And the story is even better. This movie messes with your head in a way that most movies out there cannot and will not. I had to watch it a couple of times before I understood it, and to tell you the truth I still don't completely get it--but it still kicks ass. I WANT YOU TO HIT ME AS HARD AS YOU CAN.

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