A cloddish gross-out, worse than the book, which was not very good. Actually, it is not all that awful, but Mary Harron's ironic send-up of the go-go, greedy 80s falls flat in part because it is old news (I'm still waiting for the filmic condemnation of the excesses of the Internet generation, but given that they have a warmer sensibility than the slicked back Wall Street practitioners of Reagan-era greed, I won't hold my breath). Worse, Harron's protagonist - Christian Bale as a psychotic serial killer (or is he?), desensitized by excess and commercialism - allows her so much visual leeway that she probably felt justified with a one-dimensional, non-involving script. After all, with a buff, blood-splattered Bale running naked through the icy white hallways of mid 80s minimalism, who needs text?
This concept was done a little better, but still wildly overdone, in David Fincher's Fight Club. Again, both films are too timid to actually tackle the issues they propose to grip in an adult fashion, so they opt for the grandiose, hoping the awesome force of the wages of generational sin will be enough to make the movie special. Bale is a chainsaw wielding maniac, slicing through his meat, propelled by the vicious materialism of the day. Similarly, in Fight Club, Edward Norton rebels against the commercialism that so dominates his life by lapsing into a multiple personailty and ultimately, committing mass-murder.
What the big-splatter accomplishes, however, is to force both films into the genre of super car chase movies. The text, which presumes to be of greater import than Gone in 60 Seconds, manages about that level of sophistication, because the directors are not content (or able) to write a story without use of the absurdist imagery that carries all the subtlety of a cholera outbreak.
For his part, Bale is like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. To the extent he is required to play a cartoon, he does it well, stopping just shy of being strapped to a rocket emblazoned with the label "ACME". How does one judge such an unmoored performance, other than to ignore it or summarily award it an Oscar?
Grade: C-.
