Up until a week ago, when someone asked my opinion on "American Psycho", I would tell them it was a boring and preposterous film. But that was mainly because I only saw it once, when it got released in 2000, and I was too young (or too dumb, or too eager to exclusively see violent carnage) to capture the true essence of Easton Ellis' novel/screenplay. Urgent time for a re-watch, I'd say! Twenty years later, "American Psycho" is still a bonkers film with over-the-top satire, excessive violence and an outrageous performance from Christian Bale. And yet, I still don't like it that much. Some sequences are brilliantly absurd, like when the egocentric yuppies practically orgasm over their own personalized business cards, but the majority of the film is just plain absurd; - period. Also, and be honest, who seriously cares about the frustrations of yuppie scum from the 80s? The film is at least ten years overdue. I read somewhere that Brett Easton Ellis envisioned a film version of his novel in the early nineties already, set immediately after the decade of the so-called "young upwardly-mobile professionals" of Wall Street. That would have made more sense, probably. Bale demonstrates that he's a fantastic actor, for sure. The film also features a long list of uber-talented supportive cast members (Dafoe, Witherspoon, Sevigny, Leto, Theroux, ...) but they are all quite redundant, since the plot exclusively revolves around Patrick Bateman. Brilliant soundtrack, too, but - again - overdue.
Review of American Psycho
