American Psycho

American Psycho (2000)

DVD, Brick, NJ

December 28, 2006

** / ****

“Don’t just stare at it… eat it!”

I imagine those who most enjoy American Psycho admire lead nut case Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale). It’s not that they want to be him, necessarily, though having a cushy nothing job handed to you by birthright and an endless supply of dough isn’t too shabby. Instead, it’s that they probably enjoy seeing the dude take out his pent up male aggression on unsuspecting idiots and pushovers through violent and/or sexual means. And come to think about it, who doesn’t have pent up frustration and fantasies about letting at least some of it hang out?

The setup, a rich guy with a secret life, is rather typical. However, American Psycho takes that premise to the nth degree and proves anything but your typical angst-ridden affair. This is the kind of over-the-top machismo that doesn’t blush at lewd threesomes where a man demands women eat each other’s assholes while he poses his toned and tanned body in the wall length mirror. Or how about shooting an old lady in the face because, well, you’re pissed at the ATM machine? Sound like your kind of movie? Well, consider a guy who cruises around an immaculate modern penthouse suite articulating the power of Huey Lewis and Phil Collins, circa 1983, just before he wallops you across the chest with a hatchet or throws a chainsaw down a stairwell into your side. American Psycho is that kind of perverse horror, black ironic comedy, and all those other self-conscious –isms. But what it is not is a purposeful movie, at least in a constructive way. Sure, there are hints of a feminist agenda (seriously!) and that the antics we see on screen are actually desperate cries for help by a sad, pathetic male gender but come on, if you reach that far you might as well reach into another, better movie because this isn’t the one for life lessons on gender play for any generation.

Christian Bale as the insane yuppie murderer, Patrick Bateman, does an excellent job embodying an ‘80s yuppie with good breeding who parades around with a chip on his shoulder (to say the least). Unfortunately, the film’s perversity is more trying than fascinating even with Bale’s truly memorable performance. Setting the movie during the age of greed in the mid 1980s (circa Wall Street) allows for its fair share of era specific laughs, but on the whole the movie suffers by pouring on the irony too thick. Watching it for the first time with my parents (what was I thinking!?) the movie did make my Dad laugh a few times so I guess anything’s possible. However, when push comes to shove this is a film with an interesting premise that really loses its way especially in its horrifically stupid third act. By mixing reality with fantasy, unbridled machismo with feminist subtext, unnecessary and grating voice over with 20 minutes of extra movie that really screwed up the ending, American Psycho is an alright movie that does a few things well yet many things not-so-well. It is engaging for its perversity, but it could have been so much more and probably an all-time classic film. As is, American Psycho instead settles for memorable yet unfulfilling. I want to tell you it’s great but unfortunately, that’s just not true.