Fight Club (1999, R)

Directed by David Fincher (Seven, The Game)

Written by Jim Uhls

Based on the novel by Chuck Palanuik

Starring Edward Norton (Primal Fear), Brad Pitt (Seven Years in Tibet), and Helena Bonham Carter (Wings of the Dove)

As Reviewed by James Brundage

Formed correctly, the punch is the perfect exercise. With the fist clenched tight, tucked palm up into the armpit, half of the body can be worked. As the arm spins itself to meet the opponent with the knuckles each muscle of the arm exerts nearly equal force. The proper spin takes the weight of one half of the body behind it, from the toes to the tongue (which swings in your mouth by its own accord yet is always in concert with the movement of the rest of your body), exerting the same amount of force on every fiber of your being. This same exercise, able to expend so much energy in a single action, can also serve numerous psychological functions. The most popular of these functions is the release of penned up male hostility.

Deprived of the "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" like phrasing, this is the message and purpose behind Fight Club. It is an organization designed to free the male element of society by allowing them to release their aggressions in a way that is designed to be relatively harmless.

The two men behind Fight Club are Jack (Edward Norton), a yuppie insomniac who has become addicted to self-help groups, and Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a man who makes soap and spouts modern day mantras to the common man as well as works two night jobs. Jack has spent a year crying his eyes out at support groups for ailments he doesn't have, a solace shattered by the arrival of Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), a woman who goes to the support groups "because they're cheaper than movies and they have free coffee." Shortly after this solace is shattered, his condominium is blown up. Left without a place to stay, he has a choice: stay with the woman that "were [he] to have a tumor, its name would be Marla," or stay with Tyler, a single-serving friend (he met Tyler on an airplane).

Fight Club starts innocently enough. Tyler and Jack are out in a parking lot and both experience the first fist fight of their lives. They do this every Sunday, their own Sabbath from the pressures of the designer-clothes world. After a few weeks, it begins to grow. Two becomes four. Four becomes eight. Eight becomes sixteen.

When Flight Club hits a certain point, it switches from a recreational activity to a way of life. It is the freedom from the repression of society, and Tyler Durden has become the leader of a terrorist group. The group is dedicated, autonomous, and fanatical to its head.

The most amazing thing about Fight Club is that, as you watch the entire movie unfold in front of your eyes, the rhetoric that Tyler Durden spouts makes a bizarre sort of sense. You don't know whether to laugh or to cry at the pity of the world Fincher creates or whether to start a local chapter.

Fincher, fresh off of the ultra-paranoid The Game, paints a noirish psychological terror in our minds while making us laugh at the same time. You can picture him at the Avid machine, editing away with a sardonic smile on his face and a cigarette in between his lips. He proves himself yet again to be one of the finest directors of thrillers working today.

Brad Pitt goes back to his highly eccentric roots that he honed so well in 12 Monkeys. Edward Norton proves up to the challenge of a role like one he has never done before… and handles it perfectly. In him, we see a bleak new portrait of America's urban Everyman, feeling betrayed by a society that he is at the dregs of. However, the true crowning achievement acting-wise of the film is Helena Bonham Carter, who is actually British yet flawlessly takes on an American role… body language and all. Marla, perhaps the most-well developed character, gets to have the most fun and it is clear that Carter enjoys playing her.

Done properly, the punch is the perfect exercise. Done as it is, Fight Club is a nearly perfect way to spend two and a half hours.