Review of American Psycho (2000) by Zack M — 24 Sep 2015

American Psycho stars Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman, a wealthy investment banker who works on Wall Street during the late 1980s. Bateman is what one could call the stereotypical wealthy individual. He dresses in designer clothes and cares deeply about his physical appearance. Bateman even has an obsessive morning ritual, which includes the use of a variety of skin and hair products. He uses these in order to make himself look and feel young. Bateman also performs countless nude exercises to keep himself fit. He looks good, feels good, and has money! There is just one problem... Bateman is a closeted psychopath.

Over the course of the movie, the audience begins to realize just how truly twisted the character of Patrick Bateman is. At first, there are only subtle hints at how deranged he is. We find out that he hates a majority of his coworkers but in all honesty, who doesn't? We also discover that is not a fan of his gorgeous fiancée Evelyn (played by Reese Witherspoon) and despises all of her petty problems. Once again, kind of understandable.

This was all perfectly executed by the director of the film, Mary Harron, in order to build a sense of unease amongst the audience. As we begin to see and feel the transformation, a tremendous amount of suspense is created until one night, the audience fully sees Bateman's psychotic ways when he meets a homeless man and his dog.

From that point on, Bateman struggles immensely to control his impulses and begins to lead two lives: Businessman by day, serial killer by night.

Bale puts in his best performance by playing Patrick Bateman. It appeared as if he was a completely different person from all of his other films. That is special. He was able to capture that essence of an actual psychopath and the subtleties involved.

He was calm and collective before each of his brutal kills. He was able to convince and manipulate people into doing exactly what he wanted. He was intelligent about every action he made.

There is a scene in this movie that could have gone terribly wrong if he had not taken this role serious. I mean, running down a hallway, naked, with a chainsaw in most circumstances would be humorous but Bale made it freaky as hell.

William Dafoe also puts in, what I thought to be, a fantastic supporting performance as Detective Donald Kimball. Once people start to disappear, Dafoe's character comes into play and the interactions that take place between him and Bale are utterly fantastic. The two feed off of each other and their interactions are realistic.

Believe it or not, Academy Award winning actor, Jared Leto, actually has quite a large role in this film. Seeing him as his younger self was extremely interesting for me but there is absolutely no doubt that he had immense talent from an early age. If only he were included in the film more...

Harron knew exactly what she wanted to do with this film. She did not attempt to create a movie that would make you jump endlessly. She gave the audience a fun, psychological horror film that has a tremendous amount of dark humor. She was able to capture the best moments of these tremendous actors and actresses and create what has become a cult classic.

The film adaptation is not as graphic as Bret Easton Ellis's novel by any means. I have not read the book so I cannot say I know all of the details but I have read excerpts from it. From those excerpts, I know for a fact that if Harron would have tried to replicate the book, the movie could have been rated NC-17 or X. To be quite honest, I do not believe the world would have been ready for that kind of content to mass distributed in the year 2000.

Instead, Harron found a common ground and made what is perhaps the best horror comedy to every grace the big screen. American Psycho challenges what every citizen thinks is the "norm" and makes one think about the boring lives that a majority of people live. We wake up and do the same things over and over and over again until literally, we drive ourselves insane.

This is a movie that any horror fan must see and a movie that I would also refer to as a "one-of-a-kind" movie.

I would give more thoughts on this movie but I have to go return some videotapes.