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Fight Club, 1999 |
never bothered to see this one in theaters and never even really read
the reviews, or any articles about it. I knew it was based on the book
of the same title by the modern day Hemingway style rough neck,
non-literary writer Chuck Palahniuk, but all the hype about him and how
so many men loved this book made me think it had to suck.
I might never have seen it if a friend hadn't loaned us (my girlfriend and me) her DVD in late 2005 and given a strong endorsement. To the scores. Fight Club, 1999Malaya and me were quite surprised by this film, which we recently saw on DVD. Yes, it's been out for 6 years, and it's a cult favorite, and it's very well-regarded, but we'd just never gotten around to watching it until we borrowed the DVD from a friend. I'd never seen it since I thought it was just some stupid thing about men who felt emasculated by the modern world rediscovering their inner strength by beating each other up. Sort of an R-rated version of those Promise Keeper "no wimmen 'lowed" wankfests. Lots of dumb guys at my old job loved the movie, which played neatly into my inaccurate assumption/stereotype. Fight Club is that, superficially, but it's a much larger and more interesting story than that. What really surprised us about the film was that not only did we not know there was a huge plot twist near the end, along the lines of The Sixth Sense or The Crying Game, but that we had never even heard that there was such a plot twist. As a result, it took us completely by surprise when it happened, yanking the carpet completely out from beneath us and sending us crawling avidly over the IMDB movie trivia page to see tidbits about how it was foreshadowed and developed. The big twist is believable, more or less. What I found less believable was the whole plot of the film, and the way all of these men, from every walk of life, willingly join up to do anything, legal and otherwise, for their charismatic leader. And seemingly every single guy was 100% committed, even the ones who just showed up at the various fight club meetings to beat each other up. They sat quietly while Brad Pitt lectured them on the evils of materialism and how superficial our lives have become, and then they beat each other without any actual fighting skill, and then they went home, happy and revitalized. As if none of the guys
would learn martial arts and kill their enthusiastic but wildly-swinging
opponent, or get upset about losing a the fight and bring a gun to even
things up next time, or pay zero attention to the lectures because they
just wanted to fight, etc. Still, seldom does a movie come along with a real message and this much verve and attitude, so it's certainly worth seeing to make up your own mind about. I'll enjoy watching it again, someday, knowing the twist in advance and seeing how the eventual revelation is set up throughout. |
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