I Want You To Hit Me As Hard As You Can
Yeah, I couldn’t actually let you go an entire day without giving you a review proper. I also don’t care what any of you think, the previous Fight Club review was hilarious to me. Fight Club was recommended to me at one point, but I no longer have any memory of who actually supplied the recommendation. It doesn’t really matter though. Fight Club is an immensely popular movie, but I don’t recall being that enthralled with the movie as most people were. But it’s also been a very long time since I last saw the movie, so I don’t have a whole lot of memory of it. Now that I’ve watched it again, my memory is a lot clearer. So let’s see what I thought of Fight Club, based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, written by Jim Uhls, directed by David Fincher, and starring Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf, Jared Leto, Zach Grenier, and Eion Bailey.
Our narrator and star was never given a name (although I never realized that about Edward Norton’s character until I started writing this review). What we do know about him is that he’s an insomniac. Based on a doctor’s recommendation, he starts going to support groups so that he can see what real suffering looks like. Being able to release his emotions at these meetings finally allows him to get some sleep, but his bliss is interrupted by another imposter at the support groups named Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter). After stewing over her presence for long enough, he finally confronts her and reaches an agreement so that they’ll never have to go to the support groups simultaneously. On a flight home after a business trip, he meets a soap salesman named Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). When he returns home, he finds that his apartment was blown up in a freak accident. He calls Tyler to find a place to stay and the two go out for drinks. At the end of their bar visit, Tyler asks him to hit him as hard as he can. He finds the fights that he and Tyler have help him see the world in a different way and, over time, they start a fight club. This is also ruined by Marla, who starts banging Tyler. Also, Tyler starts recruiting people from the fight club into a cult-esque organization bent on causing mayhem.
I admit that this is a good movie, but I still don’t find myself nearly as enthralled as many of the people I’ve talked to about it. There’s nothing really wrong with the movie, it’s just not the revolution that most people would have me believe. Perhaps it’s the story that enthralls some people. It’s a very interesting look at the world with a message about finding value in something immaterial. It’s very anarchic when it comes to Tyler Durden, but the narrator is just confused and whiny throughout the movie. The big reveal at the end of the movie is cool and surprising, but it’s lost some of it’s steam after watching it knowing the big secret of the movie. But it is a pretty cool story that probably never connects with me because I’ve never been in a fight, so I obviously can’t know that much about myself. I’m also not super keen on anarchy, so I can’t really watch this movie thinking, “He’s right! Let’s burn this mother down!” I did like the humor in the movie as well. People could find themselves interested in the look of the movie, and I’d tend to agree with them about that. It opens up with a cool little animation (that I’m starting to find David Fincher is very fond of) that reminded me of the opening of the X-Men movie. The rest of the movie does some really cool things with the direction and the look. I liked when the narrator was telling the audience about Tyler by standing in front of the camera and speaking directly to us as Tyler was going about his business, but occasionally stopping to interact with Norton directly. It was an interesting manipulation of the fourth wall. Other interesting style choices came up in the movie, like the brief, one frame’s worth appearance of one of the characters during the scenes early in the movie, pointing out the cigarette burns on the film, and having the film warp and look like it was about to tear. The music was also very good. Most of it was a mix of metal and electronica, provided by the Dust Brothers. It was also my introduction to the song “Where is My Mind?” by the Pixies, which I am now pretty fond of.
The thing I definitely connected with in the movie was in the performances. Everyone in the movie knocked it right out of the park. Edward Norton did a great job, losing a lot of weight and playing it really beaten down in the beginning, switching it up to a lot more confident and secure, and winded up being really manic and crazy near the end until the resolution. I found Brad Pitt a much more interesting character, and that’s what he was meant to be. He represented the man that most of us want to be: he’s strong, good looking, intelligent, funny, apparently very good at sex, but he kind of loses me when he wants to cause mayhem and anarchy. I don’t want that part, but I might accept it if I can have all the rest of that stuff. I also liked Helena Bonham Carter in the movie. She was the one that allowed us to see what was actually going on when you watched it for the second time. She was the one that showed the confusion in the situation. She also got them boobs out. Carter’s got a unique look that I can figure most people wouldn’t like, but I dig on it. I’ve found her attractive more often than not, so I’m happy to see her in this movie.
Fight Club is a great movie that never really connected to me on the same level as it does with most people, but it’s a movie I respect and admire anyway. It’s an interesting story that is kept from being a bummer by some real funniness, the look is fantastic, the music is great, and all of the performances are fantastic. I’ll still recommend this movie to you as a watch because the chances are much higher that you’ll find this movie more significant and important than I did, and even if you’re more like me, it’s a good watch. I still own this movie on DVD, after all. Fight Club gets “Ah, flashback humor” out of “This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.”
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