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In one of those curious movie coincidences, the long-gestating film version of the controversial -- and for a while unpublishable -- novel by Bret Easton Ellis finally hits theaters the same weekend as a movie (see Where the Money Is below) from the director who hadn't done another feature since lensing Ellis's first novel (Less Than Zero) in 1987. Labeled by many as outrageously gory and misogynous, this allegory on the runaway materialism of the Reagan Decade was passed around among several filmmakers and stars (including Leonardo DeCaprio) until landing with writer/director Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol). Her gender would not only put a slightly different spin on the story, but help deflect the inevitable criticism.
Set in NYC, c. 1987, AP stars British actor Christian Bale (who at 13 worked with Spielberg in Empire of the Sun), with a rippingly bland Yankee accent, as Patrick Bateman, a young Wall St. acquisitions and mergers V.P. Patrick is the epitome of brand-name narcissism and self-importance, given to lengthy discourse on his obsessive hygienic regimen and the deeper significance of the works of Huey Lewis, Whitney Houston, and Phil Collins. But trying to fit in with people whose superficial resemblance makes them nearly as interchangeable as the neckties they eternally fret over is driving him quite literally mad. And homicidal. Self-loathing yuppieness turns Patrick into a vicious, conniving, cannibalistic serial killer.
Which wouldn't be entertaining except that he takes the trouble to put on a raincoat and spread newspapers on the floor of his immaculate, sterile apartment, as he's waxing eloquent about "Hip to Be Square" (which Huey had pulled from the soundtrack album at the last minute when he learned its context in the film, causing a recall of all the initial CD press), so as not to make a mess when he axes -- literally -- a co-worker. He analyzes "Su Su Sudio" while chasing a couple prostitutes whose bodies will soon be hanging in his freezer. When he tries to confess to a friend, such as his fatuous fiance (Reese Witherspoon, who could be a just barely grown-up version of her neurotic character from Election), each is too busy ordering dinner at the restaurant du jour, doing bathroom cocaine, or jealously comparing business cards to listen.
Granted, the rampant, hyperbolic violence will certainly be off-putting to many (although most of it is suggested rather than shown; the actual onscreen mayhem is no more than what's seen in the film's Hitchcockian namesake). What's more problematic is the ending, which depending on how you look at it is either comforting or even more unsettling. But it should make for interesting discussion over post-theater coffee. B
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