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Fight Club

One thing you notice as a critic is that not all movies are for everyone, but that doesn't stop a great film from being one, or mean that every great film is for everyone. If the requisite for a **** review was that it be recommended viewing for every single person out there, the most challenging and innovative movies would often fall by the wayside. And so, with that appropriate disclaimer aside, Fight Club is one of the most innovative and entertaining films of the year, but some people aren't going to like it very much. Some would say it's "just for guys" or "just for young people", but I think that excludes too many people... let's just say some people are more likely to enjoy it than others... and know that going in.

It is true that Fight Club is a very male film, as one of its central themes (of a few) is that of what has happened to the male in modern society; with the "Fight Clubs" being a violent sort of Primal Scream therapy. It's such a male movie that there's only a few speaking roles for women in the whole piece. In other previews, I often decry the lack of good roles for women today, but in the case of Fight Club if in no other film this year, it makes a little sense... by filling the screen with so much testosterone, its messages resonate.

Fight Club is also a film about one man's journey from that of a corporate/social drone to that of a free-thinking individual, and in that way, has a central character (played by Edward Norton in yet another sizzling turn) similar to Neo in The Matrix and Lester in American Beauty. (I need to note that David Poland of roughcut.com and I hit upon the same notion, and he actually goes into this in more detail... see the link to his piece to the bottom left). It's almost like the two separate paths in those two films come together and meet in Fight Club, and then they all spiral off again into another. Of those two other films, Fight Club is more like American Beauty even though its apparent violence (and its...