Fight Club (1999)
TOMATOMETER
Critics Consensus: Solid acting, amazing direction, and elaborate production design make Fight Club a wild ride.
Critics Consensus: Solid acting, amazing direction, and elaborate production design make Fight Club a wild ride.
Trailer
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Movie Info
In this darkly comic drama, Edward Norton stars as a depressed young man (named in the credits only as "Narrator") who has become a small cog in the world of big business. He doesn't like his work and gets no sense of reward from it, attempting instead to drown his sorrows by putting together the "perfect" apartment. He can't sleep and feels alienated from the world at large; he's become so desperate to relate to others that he's taken to visiting support groups for patients with terminal … More- Rating:
- R (for disturbing and graphic depiction of violent anti-social behavior, sexuality and language)
- Genre:
- Drama , Comedy
- Directed By:
- David Fincher
- Written By:
- Jim Uhls
- In Theaters:
- Oct 15, 1999 Wide
- On DVD:
- Jun 6, 2000
Cast
-
Brad Pitt
as Tyler -
Edward Norton
as Narrator -
Helena Bonham Carter
as Marla -
Meat Loaf
as Robert -
Jared Leto
as Angel Face -
Zach Grenier
as Boss
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Critic Reviews for Fight Club
All Critics (161) | Top Critics (33) | Fresh (128) | Rotten (32) | DVD (44)
It is working American Beauty-Susan Faludi territory, that illiberal, impious, inarticulate fringe that threatens the smug American center with an anger that cannot explain itself, can act out its frustrations only in inexplicable violence.
Blistering, hallucinatory, often brilliant, the film by David Fincher is a combination punch of social satire and sociopathology.
Fight Club is an arresting, eventually appalling excursion into social satire by way of punishing violence.
We're meant to take the male bonding and the blood rituals as a protest against the sterility of corporate life and modern design, but Fincher's sadomasochistic kicks overwhelm any possible social critique.
This is American self-absorption at its finest.
[A] bold, inventive, sustained adrenaline rush of a movie...
Fight Club may be iconic and technically proficient, but it's more distant than perhaps any film to attain "modern classic" status.
perhaps the most post-9/11 film to have been made pre-9/11, capturing perfectly both the stirring discontent of the Nineties and the madness (both geopolitical and especially economic) that would erupt globally in the decade to come.
Fight Club jettisons its sense of humour 60 minutes in, and, so far from satirising the tiresome "crisis of masculinity" stuff sloshing around the airwaves either side of the Atlantic, the film simply endorses it.
Wildly inventive, exceptionally cast and undeniably controversial, there's an endless list of subtexts and viewpoints which will fuel student pub debates for years.
A controversial satire and a contemporary classic.
A movie that wants to keep its audience unsettled from beginning to end.
There's many levels of brilliance to this film, from the script to the acting to the cinematography to the overall directing.
A shrewd, scintillating work rooted in an investigation of varying degrees of masculinity and extremism.
Lurid, twisted, and violent. Not for kids.
where Taxi Driver sees the fallacy in canonizing Travis Bickle, Fight Club does it without irony.
The last great male-centric movie of the last millennium just arrived on a spectacular new Blu-ray disc for its 10th anniversary, providing the opportunity to relish every aspect of David Fincher's ultimate dissection of Gen-X masculinity. Fight Club</
A complex, confused look at life in late-'90s America, David Fincher's blood-black comedy Fight Club remains one of the most divisive pictures of the past 20 years.
Fight Club is still today a definitive film, a statement as strong as any rock anthem and twice as packed with power chords.
One of the seminal films of the 1990s...just as darkly funny, epic, and psychically wrenching as ever. [Blu-ray]
"Fight Club" is a cinematic Hail-Mary pass from David Fincher that the audience desperately wants to catch.
Audience Reviews for Fight Club
David Fincher's adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's cult best seller has changed modern cinema forever. Not only has it raised the bar in editing and cinematography but it's also stuck its two fingers up at lazy producers and the concept of the Blockbuster action movie. A movie has always got to make a profit, but it should never be the main drive behind a production. Fightclub opened up a lot of eyes in the industry as to what could be achieved. It's also one of few productions that defied the critics by filming an 'Un-filmable book', and to its credit, many young and gifted film-makers have followed suit and underground/Cult literature is finding its way into cinemas. Fincher had never really received the credit that was due him, even after the success of Seven. Now I think it's safe to say he is one of the top directors working today. Fightclub is a modern classic and an important, seminal masterpiece and quite possibly the last great film of the twentieth century.
http://cinephilecrocodile.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/fight-club-dir-david-fincher-1999-david.html
Super Reviewer
David Fincher's adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's acclaimed novel is dark, unorthordox and sickly in many ways. Fight Club presents a superb case of strong performances from Norton, Pitt & Bonham Carter along with an intricate presentation, making this a cult film that resonates in today's age of film-making. 4/5
MoreSuper Reviewer
A yuppie comes under the influence of an enigmatic stranger who encourages him to shed the trappings of modern consumerist life and begin an underground bare knuckle boxing club to rediscover his manhood. The 90s created a whole generation of nihilistic smart asses who found their standard bearer in Tyler Durden. Fight Club was a bit of a phenomenon upon its release and it seemed to speak to the the disenfranchised youth of Generation X in a way that nothing had before and being one such example, I hailed it as a masterpiece as did many others. Looking back, it's really far more a smug indie comedy than serious drama and I can't quite believe that anyone really took it seriously. It was for all intents and purposes the death knell of said generation even though we didn't really see it at the time, Palahniuk was showing us the ultimate futility of that way of thinking. It's amusing how a charismatic self styled guru can create such a cult of personality (which is no doubt how many forms of organised extremism find their way into existence) and Brad Pitt cuts a very imposing and frankly hilarious figure as Durden. In fact the whole thing smacks of the kind of creativity in all areas that we rarely see in mainstream cinema and as such is still well worth seeing. But I can't help feeling that Fight Club was the logical extension of Project Mayhem itself; a practical joke that people took way too seriously!
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Super Reviewer
Damn some people really missed the whole point of this movie. Most people either can't or won't recognize the brilliant satire behind this film (yes Ebert, that means you).
For me, it's just as good as the Chuck Palahniuk book it's based on. The story of this potent work follows a nameless narrator who deals with his sad, lonely existence by becoming addicted to support groups for issues he doesn't have, but fakes, mostly because he finds the attention comforting. His addiction changes from support groups to underground fighting matches with other disaffected men after he meets the kooky soap salesman Tyler Durden. From there, things really start to spiral, but I'm not saying anymore, as part of the joy is experiencing things unfolding for one's self.
The actors do so well with their characters that it's hard to imagine anyone else playing the parts, and not only that, but they become the characters, and you forget that they are really just actors. Fincher's dark and hypnotic style works perfectly with this material, and the editing is also really good.
This movie isn't really about dudes beating each other up in underground fighting venues. It's a critique of masculinity, being marginalized by society, and a major attack against gross materialism and consumerism. This is catharsis at it's finest.
I first saw this when I was a sophomore in high school the same week I first saw Reservoir Dogs and Taxi Driver, and I was never the same after that. Those three films are what lead me to become the rabid film buff that I am, and the rebellious and disaffected nature of the protagonist here really spoke to me, and I found myself really able to identify with a lot of the stuff going on here.
I suppose the film is perhaps a tad overrated, and, unlike the book, the twist doesn't work quite as well, but even then, this film is a powerful, compelling, and amazing work of art. Also, given the content, it really amazes me (still) that this was a mainstream production.
Bottom line, this is a must see.
Super Reviewer
Fight Club Quotes
- Tyler Durden:
- If you aren't on your way to becoming a vet in six weeks, you will be dead.
- Tyler Durden:
- What's that smell?
- Narrator:
- Marla you liar, you big tourist, I need this now get out!
- Marla Singer:
- I haven't been fucked like that since gradeschool.
- Narrator:
- I am Jack's raging bile duct.
- Tyler Durden:
- It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.
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