My god this is one sick little monkey, no seriously I really mean that - at the time of writing this review I’d literally just taken this DVD out of my Drive and I was confused. Now I know I usually open up with a light-hearted look at the way I ended up getting the DVD but this one is too strange to even start to come up with an opening for.
So what is Fight Club then?, Officially I’m not allowed to tell you anything about the Fight Club, so whatever you mouthshutters out there say you didn’t hear it from me, OK?
Now we’ve got that sorted out lets start again, What is the Fight Club? Well its a movie about a lot of people fighting of course!, however to go into the storyline it follows the story of Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt)and his accomplice whose name we never find out and is only referred to in the credits as ’Narrator’ (Edward Norton), it all starts out with us seeing the Narrator being an Insomniac whose only respite is visiting a variety of different support groups however when he meets Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) he realises that hes basically conning these support groups and tries to bail out as quickly as possible, this is where we first meet Tyler Durden.
After the Narrator becomes homeless (not going to say how - it’d ruin the plot) we watch Durden and the Narrator visit a bar, leave and for the heck of it get involved in a scuffle, hence the Fight Club is born.
Once again, thats it, I’m going to say no more - if I did the whole movie would be ruined and there’d be no point in watching the film if you’d read the review so, lets just say that it gets just a little bit weird from here-on-in.
So Lets meet the cast shall we? As always its time for a list in appearance order so:
Narrator (Edward Norton), a lot of you will remember Edward from the stunning film that was American History X, Once again hes playing a violent young man but this time hes playing a character that starts off as just a normal person, and he shows that transition towards madness off very well, Norton is an extremely under-rated actor and once again hes showing off his talents in a great style, and his participation in the fight scenes is a credit to the success of this movie as it is with all of the actors always very believable and very gruesome (don’t say you haven’t been warned)
Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) Buy Soap! Sorry ladies if you’re used to the Meet Joe Black style of Pitt’s movies then you’re a long way from home here - meet the original Psycho, sick, twisted and in a strange way hilarious the character of Tyler Durden is one of those that you absolutely have to have the right actor for and with Brad Pitt, well David Fincher and crew struck gold - the maniacal one takes control of your screen and almost drags you kicking and screaming to watch the scenes he’s involved in, it just goes to show how versatile an actor Brad Pitt can be when he involves himself in films like this and one of finchers other productions, Se7en - both of them disturbing movies, both of them made great by Pitts involvement
Bob (Meatloaf) again a strange choice of actor - Bob you see is a sensitive character and well Meatloaf doesn’t fit that sort of character in my opinion, in fact in this movie his performance was almost laughable, don’t get me wrong he tried but its just it wasn’t his sort of part, it wasn’t even that he had a bad script its just, well, the scripting department mucked it up big time here, don’t get me wrong Mr.Loaf you didn’t turn in an awful performance but it wasn’t a brilliant one either.
Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) well, a difficult performance to look into, Helena really does work the character of Marla well and at times she does seem very believable but at times you end up wondering if she was a joke character, an extremely well worked out performance from Bonham-Carter at all times and even though the character is a bit ’jokey’ shes always showing how strong an actress she is, with this depressed psychopath of a character - did this paragraph confuse you? well it did me, apologies I still feel its needed but hey if you’re too confused comment and I’ll see what I can do.
Well theres other characters of course but the above 4 are the core characters and the story is centred around them, the rest of the supporting cast are all very good and this is one of the strengths of the film.
But as we all know by now it isn’t just a cast that makes a movie - what about the location? Well dark, dank, creepy these are just three of the words that can be used to describe the general setting of ’Fight Club’. Of course this is to be expected with a David Fincher movie, and with the storyline behind the film there wasn’t any other type of location that could be chose, and it definitely works, helping to highlight the dark, disturbing undertones of the film brilliantly.
Finally the soundtrack, well once again its of the darker tones, to keep up with the activities on screen and once again noticably apart from a pixies song playing the movie out that I can’t for the life of me remember the name of we are treated to a soundtrack that plays along quietly in the background whilst being clear enough to make you notice. Most of the time the music is of course played in tandem with a scene in the film but there are some times when it seems to be just a little out of place, only a minor hitch though.
So then, It’s a good hour and a half now since I’ve seen the film and am I a bit more aware of what the film is trying to say?, well to be honest yes, its made me look into myself and see if I’m more distracted by material things, and well I’m going to try to be more interested in who I am (believe that and you’ll believe anything).