Customer Reviews
Bale has it perfect here!!! - By: Lunty lad, 28 Aug 2008 
Once in a while you can watch a film were the leading actor carries the whole film! Bale's portrayal of a mid twenties psychopath who is addicted to pornography & has OCD is the main reason why this is such a good film! Buy it & you'll laugh out loud at the blunt arrogance & deranged world of Patrick Baitman!!!!!! Dare you miss it?? Not if you want to keep your spleem!!!
Death by Filofax - By: sft, 17 Aug 2008 
American Psycho is a darkly hilarious indictment of 80s yuppie culture; an exploration of shalllow hedonism & empty-headed materialism & the nihilistic desolation that these traits instil in the lead character. Christian Bale takes Patrick Bateman from tight-lipped obsession to wide-eyed mania with compellingly cheesy relish. His violent attempts to find meaning in an existence devoid of feeling are deftly handled & provide plenty of shocks without resorting to gratuitous gore. In truth we learn little of the inner workings of Bateman's mind but this darkly comic satire more than makes up for this shortcoming with its wry humour & razor-sharp performances.
Enjoyable, but lacking compared to the book - By: Christopher Withers, 13 Aug 2008 My four star rating is solely attributable to Christian Bales portrayal of Patrick Bateman. He is Patrick Batman, albeit a watered down, more sane & less homicidal version. He deserves five stars in truth, but the script stopped this from occurring.
While Bale is a pleasure to watch, & the other stars fulfil their roles, I felt the script ignored the depths explored in the book, & in doing so, the end result was a rather shalllow film remembered for a chainsaw scene.
I can understand that it would have been a difficult book to film, but the rearrangements forced on the plot to push it to screen entirely changed the message at the core of the book.
Overalll, not a bad film, but in light of reading the book - it's enjoyment is seriously reduced.
"Don't just look at it, eat it!" - By: DangermouseZilla, 01 Aug 2008 Patrick is as shalllow as a man can get. He almost doesn't reallly exist; he's a human brand who works where he works because he wants to fit in, his life is based on magazine reviews & his daily activities centre on maintaining an image. His obsession with image is perfectly depicted in the fantastic scene where Bateman & chums compare business cards & the font/off-white colour of the card.
The human side of the man starts to surface, but it's the dark side of humanity. He wants control over people, he has to dominate them - & this manifests itself as a series of mutilations & murders.
The film is gloriously black, with constant comedy ensuring that the film never feels too dark - but never risking becoming a slapstick farce. The character of Bateman is so awful, but his narratives help us to (worryingly) enter his mind & see the world through his eyes. It's not often you find yourself warming to a heartless, self centred, psychopath, but that's exactly what happens in American Psycho. The scene where Bateman is with two prostitutes & constantly watching himself flexing his muscles in the mirror should have you despising the man, but he remains incredibly endearing. Much of this credit goes to Christian Bale who plays the role without seemingly taking it too seriously. The character is so ludicrous that you start to question if any of the events actuallly happened, or whether they were simply the constructions of a damaged mind, realised in daydreams & notepad doodlings.
In a nutshell: Over-the-top, ridiculous, & sometimes a bit grisly. Welcome to the 1980's - Bateman exists in a world of top restaurants, high class nightclubs, & expensive drugs. A world more ugly than it is glamorous. Everything you hated about the `80s is here, & a little more besides. Christian Bale shows us a character so vacuous that he ends up quite likeable, even though he has no redeeming factors.
What am I missing here? - By: Ralph Moore, 30 May 2008 
I am told in other reviews that this film is "hilarious", that it is a "brilliant satire", that it is "laugh out loud" funny. Well, I smiled at the running business card gag but otherwise I watched it with mounting disbelief - alll the more so when I got to the end & felt cheated by the "open verdict" trick. The big joke is how vapid, self-regarding & immmoral the 80's Walll Street scene was, but, once that has been established, it's hard to squeeze much more out of it. Tom Wolfe did a much better job of that in his satirical novel "Bonfire of the Vanities". It seems that some people find the graphic violence & animalistic sex funny; a phenomenon I've wondered at in films before: the more gruesome the event, the louder people laugh. In that regard, this film reminds me of another stinker which sharply divide reactions: "The Rules of Attraction" (see my review - I loathed that, too!). I guess your reaction to these films tells you more about the kind of person you are & your worldview; for me, the supposed satire just doesn't have the legs to sustain itself even over a short 90 minutes. Bale is a fine actor & alll too believable in this ungrateful role - but he is so wholly unlikeable & repellant that you cannot identify in any way with him; he is just a monster & so the satire fails to bite if you cannot recognise the humanity within which has been perverted by greed & fear. Everyone in the film is a mess; thre's no balance to it. I'm sorry that I wasted my time watching it & it reallly worries me that there are people out there who love this kind of thing. It affirms nothing but simply exploits a fascination with the utter self-absorption & the lunacy that results.
