American Psycho
2000 Directed by Mary Harron
Synopsis
I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.
A wealthy New York investment banking executive hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he escalates deeper into his illogical, gratuitous fantasies.
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So that was rather surprising.
The first time I watched this was not long after I had read the book. The book left me shocked, bewildered and in awe of the deeply dark and gruesome satire Brett Easton Ellis had written. It highlighted an era that focussed on self improvement, image and acquiring wealth. Ellis' novel comments on this in the most horrible way, through the completely and utterly insane Patrick Bateman. This is perhaps the shallowest and vilest protagonist I've ever come across in a novel. And he has to be as the true strength in Ellis' novel is that he condemns him and what he stands for. It is too easy to go along with the controversy surrounding…
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This review reportedly contains spoilers. I can handle the truth.
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Film Fact or Fiction?: Christian Bale based elements of his performance as Patrick Bateman on Tom Cruise after seeing an interview with the diminutive star. According to director Mary Harron, Bale said he saw “... this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes ...”. - Hopefully fact.
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“There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable... I simply am not there.”
American Psycho is an eerie, twisted and utterly brilliant film which is composed of a perfectly written character, and an absolutely brilliant performance from Christian Bale. It left me bewildered, shocked, and quite frankly to say the least, completely astonished I could love a film about such a horrible subject matter.
One of the main reasons this film has such an impact…
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Reaction image gold mine.
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I just watched this with my parents. That was interesting.
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Insanely decadent, these psychopaths!
One of them wields his chainsaw like others their business cards. Whoever wants to peak behind a mask of sanity ... Watch it.
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Twisted, mind-fuck, brilliant
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First time I see this "classic film" and I must say that managed to surprise me ......
I loved the main character Christian Bale and his whole mental madness, no doubt that the film attempts to reflect a part of society today ... Who has the most beautiful card work, who gets a reservation in one of the most expensive restaurants in the city etc etc ...
In the end we wonder if all the deaths that occurred were real or not, but after reviewing the film no doubt that all this happened only in the mind of Patrick Bateman. -
Just fantastic. There seems to be a lot of discrepancy with viewers if the events were fantasy or not — so I've picked up the book before making a definitive judgement.
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Film Fact or Fiction?: Christian Bale based elements of his performance as Patrick Bateman on Tom Cruise after seeing an interview with the diminutive star. According to director Mary Harron, Bale said he saw “... this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes ...”. - Hopefully fact.
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This review reportedly contains spoilers. I can handle the truth.
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I'd like to write a review, but I have to return some videotapes.
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[Seen in 2000, not sure when, neglected to date stamp back then]
Christian Bale owns the film - and he's hilarious - but Mary Harron suggests too explicitly that the purposefully overblown and grisly murders he commits may be a fantasy he has created. This gives the commentary a sense of pretentiousness and irritability that sells the film to mindlessly simplistic hypotheses such as, well, "Rich people are the root of all evil". Duh. (Tired echo: The book is more skillful because it successfully balances and maintains ambiguity with allegory.)
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