I’ve sat through a few movies in my time whereby I felt that the director was playing a colossal joke on the audience. This is one of them. It ticks me off.
I read an interview with director David Fincher who said he expected people to think “Fight Club” was “funny”. He must have been on some very serious drugs at the time. This movie may have a few humorous moments in it, but funny? I think not. Boring, stupid, disgusting, brutal are some of the words that come to mind.
The story centers around Edward Norton – “the Narrator”, an auto recall investigator who is so bored with his job and the mundaneness of his life that he becomes enamored with Tyler (Brad Pitt), a subversive lunatic who eschews all ties to normal life, like material possessions or a stable respectable job.
Tyler concocts the idea of forming a fight club because he believes it to be a potent means toward freeing himself (and others) from dependency upon what advertisers have deemed a man to be, from the underwear they choose to the furniture that graces their houses and condos.
The first rule is to never talk about fight club. Suddenly the club is filled with members, all of whom swear to never talk about fight club and the club grows ever bigger. Like an addict, Norton becomes increasingly drawn into the violence and the influences of Tyler. And for the longest time thereafter all we get is pummeling and bashing, blood and spit.
At a length of 2:33, it was at least 33 minutes too long. Not that I don’t like a good fight now and then, but let’s get on with a story, already! You can’t fault any of the actors. All did a wonderful job, including Helena Bonham Carter as Marla Singer, a self-loathing woman addicted to various dependency groups who ends up having a mean sexual relationship with Tyler.
The journey to the twisty resolution and finding out who Norton’s character really is, is so muddied, that I was very nearly brain-numbed by the violence and characters I largely cared nothing about that I was very much looking forward to going home to my material possessions and Calvin Klein underwear.
“Fight Club” did have an interesting message behind it, but it was technically unable to deliver that message in a coherent or interesting fashion. Instead, this film came across as little else than a sick film about fighting and vandalism.
Lotta says “Fight Club” isn’t worth the talent that acted in it.