REVIEW #68 Fight Club (1999)

Fight club is directed by David Fincher and follows a male insomniac as he becomes disconnected from his consumer lifestyle and subsequently starts an underground fight club with a soap salesman called Tyler. As the fight club expands things begin to get more dangerous and more sinister.

CAST & THE ACTING 

Edward Norton plays The Narrator and Brad Pitt is Tyler and both of them deliver great performances. Norton especially because he captures a man broken by a mundane life, a mind that deteriorates further as the film goes on. The chemistry between the two actors is one of the highlights of the film and makes for some great duologues. Helena Bonham Carter plays the love interest Marla and as you can expect, it is a great performance even if she doesn’t occupy as much screen time compared to the two main characters. The acting in these sorts of roles always has to be great because they need to convincingly show a fragile mind and anything less then great can really ruin the whole plot. I must admit I haven’t seen much of Norton’s work, I have only watched his Incredible Hulk film which in fairness not a film that would showcase his talent. However he was the stand out in this film and I will definitely be looking to add more of his film catalogue to my watch list!

PLOT & THE STORYLINE 

I think the plot is really clever, I did guess the big twist pretty early on which was a little disappointing but I think it did well to keep my attention throughout. I was surprised by it to be honest, I was expecting it to be a film with the primary focus being the fight club but the focus is definitely on the psyche of The Narrator which I enjoyed. It did escalate pretty quickly at the end of the film which felt a little rushed, starting a fight club to becoming fully fledged terrorists… The storyline really complimented the relationship between Tyler and The Narrator, even if there wasn’t much going on in many of the scenes, the duologues between the two were enough to keep me entertained which is also a big credit to Pitt and Norton. There is a running theme of mental health in the film, not only with the main characters but a large proportion of the other characters too and considering the topic was more of a taboo subject in 1999 compared to how it is today, it was approached really well. 

CINEMATOGRAPHY & SPECIAL EFFECTS 

The cinematography was good, there were a lot of well put together scenes in Fight Club that looked great. The lighting often reflected the tone of the scene, which explains the darker settings for the majority of the film. There was only a small amount of special effects used, with the most obvious scene being the huge building demolitions at the end of the film, which looked okay but the scene was set at night so the dark lighting could disguise the quality of the effects pretty well. Jeff Cronenweth was the man behind the cinematography for the film and he done really well. 

OVERALL (7.5/10)

I did enjoy the film and I am happy it surprised me, it really wasn’t what I expected it to be and that is certainly a positive. It was my first time watching the film and I was impressed by its theme of mental health and the struggles the characters had, considering mental health was more of a taboo subject at that time they approached it really well. The twist was very clever but I did guess it pretty early on so maybe the clues the director put in were a little too obvious! There were some slow moments in the film but they were redeemed by the fantastic chemistry between Brad Pitt and Edward Norton who seemed to bounce off each other so well. I would definitely recommend this film but I’d imagine most people aren’t like me and have actually already seen it!

Thanks fo reading.

Callan