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What's the Story, Mornin' Glory?
American Psycho
(2000)
It's 1987. Meet Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale). Partick is a seemingly normal guy. He's vice president of a company that his father owns and in his own mind he is well respected and admired. He takes extra special care of his appearance and every morning he goes through a meticulous routine to maintain it. He has a fiancee (Reese Witherspoon), but he his sleeping with her drugged up best friend out of spite. Patrick and his buddies (all major players in major companies) go out, party, do cocaine, and try to have witty conversations among themselves. Patrick also has a great love for music. Patrick seems normal, but he's actually not. He actually views himself as an empty shell of a man who harbors murderous thoughts and acts on them often. He feels that he has the outward appearance of a human, but doesn't feel any real human emotions except greed and disgust.
One day, Partick kills a colleague (Jared Leto) over a business card. He makes it seem like the guy just left town and went to London, but a detective (William Dafoe) is sent to question him about his whereabouts the night that his colleague disappeared. While the disappearance of his colleague is being investigated Patrick goes on a murdering spree of hookers and any other woman he can lure into his apartment. When the investigation comes to a head Partick fears that he's been found out and kills as many people as possible before he can be sent to jail. But...is Patrick truly a mass murderer who keeps heads in his freezer or does he only wish it?
You Learn Something New Everyday...
 Hookers don't like jokes.
Yuppies don't know anything about serial killers.
Doing drugs requires quiet time.
Zing!
"Do you like Phil Collins?" - Patrick to the hookers.
Survey SAYS...
American Psycho is a black comedy at heart. A lot of people will probably not be able to see this or even find it funny because of the graphic violence that surrounds it. There are some truly classic lines here. However, after a while the extreme violence really begins to become, well, a little extreme. It eventually gets to be too much and it becomes overpowering. Since the film lacked direction I often wondered when the movie would end. Patrick would do something totally off the wall and violent and then crack a joke. It's like "ha, ha, alright, lets wrap this up."
I spent most of American Psycho being totally confused. From what I've heard, you have to read the book to truly understand this movie and that the book is a lot worse then the movie (in a violent sense). This must be true because I did not understand this movie at all. I'm not so dim that I didn't get the fact that this was a social commentary on something, but I'm definitely not bright enough to know what the commentary was really about. From what I gather, it's about consumerism and apathy. I don't know if it's specifically about these things in the 80s or what. I'm probably way off in general. Heh.
One major thing that made me dislike American Psycho was that it had no direction. Yes, killing is senseless in itself, but it was senseless in an annoying way here. He didn't kill because he liked it, or because he needed to. He did it and that was it. To top all this senselessness off, it was a head scratcher. Did he kill all those people, or was it his imagination? Dreams? Fantasizing? Or did he actually kill all those people and got away with it because everyone's so coked out and completely oblivious to him. Why does no one believe him when he says murderous things? Does he not actually say them?
Patrick wasn't a believable character and was also an incredibly annoying character. He had a monotone voice that droned on and he had this self pity quality that I don't think anyone finds attractive. I've never met a serial killer (that I've known of anyway), but he really seemed to try too hard to be unaffected by everything. Everything was too forced, like he really did care, but is pretending not to. I don't know if this was the point of Patrick's character, but usually writers want to make the main character somewhat likeable so that you'll stick through the entire movie. Also, this movie got some major minus points for senseless killing of animals. He kills people in cold blood, I didn't need anymore proof that he's a heartless killer. Geez.
William Defoe was a silly, but useless cameo and Reese Witherspoon was so freaking cute! Really, if you can sit through a movie that seems to go nowhere and have a lot happen, but feel like nothing was accomplished at all, and not let the constant violent images ruin the underlying humor plus have an incredible ability to suspend your disbelief for a movie that demands you take it seriously...then this isn't a bad movie at all. In fact, it's a really good one. Personally, I couldn't do that and I didn't really enjoy the movie. Maybe if it was about 30 minutes shorter I could have. So, if you like...a lot of naked man ass, pigs in Santa hats, naked chainsaw-ing, unprovoked explosions, hooker sex, a lot of nakedness, and heads in freezers, then this is the flick for you. As for us...we give American Psycho
That Wasn't so Bad Was It?
I was left Feeling: Confused
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