Starring:Christian Bale, Reese Witherspoon, Jared Leto, Josh Lucas, Samantha Mathis, Bill Sage, Willem Defoe, Matt Ross
Director:
Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol)
MPAA Rating:
R for strong violence, sexuality, drug use and language.
Release Date:
April 2000
Synopsis:
With a chiseled chin and an iron physique, Patrick Bateman's looks make him the ideal yuppie, and the ideal serial killer. Bateman takes pathological pride in everything from his business card to his music CD collection, all the while plotting his next victim's demise.
My Two Cents:
Christian Bale plays the role of Patrick Bateman, a self-absorbed, narcissistic, status-obsessed yuppie with homicidal tendencies. He’s 27, unmarried, takes care of his skin, is incredibly fit and well-groomed, is liked by the ladies and has a shitload of money, but none of this satisfies him more than killing people. He has been killing bums and hookers at night, but slowly loses control over his desire and gets careless, killing more and more people and not even covering up the evidence properly. He has no self-preservation instinct anymore and maybe even wants to be caught. When he kills one of his co-workers out of sheer envy he gets Detective Donald Kimball (Willem Defoe) on his tail, who suspects him of the murder. All of Bateman’s “friends” are as self-absorbed as he is and don’t even realize he is criminally insane.
Patrick Bateman is one sick fuck, but Christian Bale’s performance is so good I kind of wanted to see how far he could go on his killing spree before getting caught. He does odd things like send his bloody sheets to the laundry and even drags a bloody duffel bag with a corpse inside in front of his condo’s security guard and other people, and they don’t seem to notice. It’s like people don’t see what he’s doing, or perhaps he isn’t really killing anybody and it’s all in his imagination. It’s never really clear if he’s indeed murdering people or not. At one point an ATM machine tells him to insert a cat instead of his card, and he also blows up a police car with a single gunshot. When this happens he seems really surprised like he doesn’t truly know if it happened or not. Regardless, it isn’t the real point of the movie.
I found myself laughing quite a few times, not what I expected from a movie about a serial killer. Not that there aren’t horrible scenes of violence, but even those scenes are not as graphic as your regular horror film. It’s all handled in an artistic way by director Mary Harron. The sex scenes are a bit more graphic, but this isn’t porn or anything.
You could say the movie’s message is that people and societies with a superiority complex want to destroy anyone who’s inferior, and in Patrick Bateman’s case it literally means to kill them. Any movie that makes you want to discuss it with others is worth watching, and I’ll be talking about American Psycho for a while.
Score:
