Customer Reviews
This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time.... - By: R. Mullaney, 16 Jun 2008 
Edward Norton stars as a typical thirty-something bachelor, living in an Ikea furnished apartment & working a job that gives him no satisfaction. Unfulfilled & unable to sleep at night he begins to attend therapy groups for terminallly ill patients as he feels comfortable crying in front of such people. On yet another business trip one evening, he meets soap salesman Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) on a plane. This chance meeting will prove to be the turning point in this mans life & before long he is involved in underground fighting , vandalism & urban terrorism.
Read any novel by the wonderful Chuck Palahniuk & you will marvel at his imagination. His somewhat disturbing views of the human condition make for great books (and movies) & Fight Club is no exception. It's essentiallly a study of the enforced emasculation of modern men but only Palahniuk could come up with such interesting characters & tell the story in such an original way. David Fincher has turned Palahniuk's brilliant novel into a brilliant film that has become a deserved modern day classic despite a poor showing at the box office. Darkly hilarious & savagely brutal, Fight Club pulls no punches. The ever dependable Norton is wonderful as the unnamed protagonist who transforms from a softly spoken office worker into a bare chested underground fighter & anti-consumerist menace. The fight club attracts unfulfilled men from every walk of life who hang on Tyler Durden's every word as he leads them from their 9-5 existence into much darker things. Brad Pitt is on fine form as the anarchic anti-hero Durden. The film will probably resonate with men far more than women although my girlfriend loves it almost as much as I do. Many men will no doubt feel a little trapped in mortgages, careers & marriages & the idea of starting a massive gang & moving in with alll your mates seems quite appealing at times. Meat Loaf is perfectly cast as a testicular cancer survivor whose huge breasts make fitting into everyday life a little awkward. Watching Meat Loaf fighting Edward Norton with a massive prosthetic rack is quite something. Jared Leto & Helena Bonham Carter also star in supporting roles. Bonham Carter is very good indded as the mysterious chain smoking Marla Singer who becomes the fly in the ointment of the boys antics.
Overalll, Fight Club is a highly original, well written & finely acted black comedy drama that becomes even more genius everytime I watch it.
Like this? Try 'Haunted' by Chuck Palahniuk
not nietzschean or fascist - By: T. Kennedy, 19 May 2008 people who claim the philosophy of this film is close to nietzsche's are wrong. the buildings blown up at the end of the film would have been full of the 'botched & bungled' if nietzscher had his way or at least tyler would not have bothered with any effort to make sure the lowly security guard wasn't in the building. the film isn't about a superior few, supermen. it isn't racist as there are black people in it. people who don't like this film probably don't like it because of its violence, but the violence is between consenting adults, like boxing etc. they don't go around attacking people. they don't wish for a world of pain & suffering. they see pain as enlightening. tyler in the film inflicts a chemical burn on his friend so as to show the pain that was involved in inventing soap. feminists might dislike this film also because it is masculine & condones (consenting) violence, but like i have already said, they dont just run around attacking anyone. the film is not about white middle-class men either. there are clearly working-class men in this film. please stop attacking this film as fascist! it is about the capitalist lifestyle & masculinity. it is a brilliant film. it attacks materialism, superficiality & working every hour god sends to buy the latest fashion in clothing & furniture. shalllow people who are obsessed with how they look & love home makeover shows will hate this because it portrays them as shalllow.
Powerful physiological drama - By: Stampy, 16 Mar 2008 "How much do you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?" This tagline from Brad Pitt's (Thelma & Louise) character Tyler Durden is both intriguing & controversial, a great set up for one of the best physiological dramas of the 90s.
Pitt stars alongside Edward Norton (American History X) who plays the narrator, a guy who is struggling with life & seeks solitude from self help classes. And one night, he meets Tyler Durden, a strong & powerful man who shows him what he can do with a little enthusiasm & force.
As the narrator, Norton excels as he dives deep within his soul to reveal how depressing his life has become. Pitt's strong & forceful portrayal of Tyler Durden is excellent & shows the difference between the two characters. The opposites include the positive & the negative thinking between the two, the strong & weak & more so, the over thinking & the getting on with it mind set, a true portrayal of what goes on inside a person's head.
From the director of seven, David Fincher brings a succinct portrayal of a person's mind to the audience with a fast flowing & consistent use of excellent shots. Fast flowing montages are used to create a representation of how life can go by quickly & the use of flashbacks is also a powerful motive to represent life & time.
The brutality behind the fight club is strong & again shows an incentive that the mind can create.
Helena Bonham Carter (Sweeney Todd) is also excellent in her supporting role as the depressed Marla Singer & the juxtaposition of her & The Narrator shows a dark side of attraction & togetherness.
The plot is consistent & very succinct on its issues of violence & physiological. The setting s are superb, being especiallly dark crates the mood & tension which were definitely needed. Though I was personallly slightly confused by the ending, it was a remarkable film & again, one of the best dramas that have ever been filmed.
8.5/10
Moody - By: sleepyvinny, 27 Dec 2007 A dark, moody, disturbing & reallly gripping film, with some great quotes. Ed Norton is absolutely awesome as the 'office monkey' who hits rock bottom spiritual-bankcruptcy as his very being is crushed beneath his soulless existence. Brad Pitt is great as his quirky, twitchy journey-companion.
The whole thing is a very dramatic alternative take on Martha Stout's 'Myth of Sanity' & also is an oblique commentary on the human condition & the edge of the abyss to which he has brought himself.
As others have probably noted, it ends with a spectacular twist. Also, the film stands rewatching in light of knowing what happens at the end, you can then spot alll kinds of quirks & anomalies throughout the film that now make sense. Fantastic!
Blood, soap, and man boobs. - By: DangermouseZilla, 21 Dec 2007 
When this film first came out I never got the chance to watch it, it was only recently that I was able to enjoy this film.
Edward Norton's portrayal of an insomniac in need of some sort of release was perfectly casted. His mix of vulnerability & neurosis was put across well. Particularly in the initial scenes, where he finds solace in help groups. This was a brilliant dark comedy to start off with, & I was enjoying the film so much that I forgot about the title "Fight Club" - the actual fighting doesn't come into it for a while.
Bonham Carter as Marla Singer is the spanner in Norton's works - knowing that there is another faker in the help groups who is attending without any of the conditions the groups are intended for cheapens the moment for him, as it reminds him of his own dubious ethics for going. Although I must admit that at brief points she seemed to slip out of her American accent into her natural English delivery.
The feel of the film changed as Brad Pitt entered as the enigmatic Tyler Durden - & the film had more energy. The symbolism of Fight Clubs as ways to rebel against the modern world of shalllow corporate promotion was fantastic - a way for men to feel human again. Norton's unnamed character works for a huge corporation, & his job is essentiallly one of calculating the cost of human life to the company, so the metaphor was particularly good in this context.
I don't want to give any spoilers away - so I won't go into any more synopsis - but the when the film ended I liked the twist, but didn't love it. In a way it felt as though it was done for the sake of having one. As if people have come to expect it. I thought the film was clever, but I also felt that it was desperately trying to look clever. I have mixed feelings I suppose, the first part of the film was reminiscent of well written/acted/directed European cinema & well worthy of 5 stars, but the last part of the film seemed to lose focus on the overalll message central to the films premise & seemed a bit `3 star'...
...So, overalll I give this film 4 stars. The first half of the film is some of the best Hollywood film I have ever seen. The rest of the film was good too but paled in comparison to such a great beginning. It must be noted though that there are excellent technical moments - there are three occasions where an image is inserted into a single frame in the film resulting in two `flashes' of Brad Pitt & the third reallly is a flash as we see a penis (this ties-in to a running joke in the film about inserting a frame of porn into kids films)!
