American Psycho (2000)

3.5 out of 4

Starring: Christian Bale, Reese Witherspoon, Willem Dafoe, Chloe Sevigny, Samantha Mathis, Cara Seymour

Director: Mary Harron

Time: 101 mins

While I haven't read Brett Easton Ellis' novel American Psycho, I certainly remember that it caused a huge controversy when it was published for its ultra-graphic violence. Here in Australia it was restricted material - sold in a plastic bag and deemed to be on the same censorship level as pornography. It's taken several years for a film adaptation to come out, and it is at once a very funny, very satiric look at 80s excesses such as greed, money and the yuppie lifestyle. Yes, there is violence, but the gore is probably not as graphic as was described in the novel. The disturbing story is obviously not to everyone's taste, but if you can look past the coldness of the characters, and the blood, you'll find it a delicious black comedy.

Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) is a young, successful professional working for a mergers and acquisitions firm on Wall Street. He is obviously very rich, dressed in crisply tailored designer suits and living in a modern apartment in central Manhattan. He spends half his morning preparing and rejuvenating his skin, before going to work to organise power dinners at upscale restaurants with the help of his timid secretary Jean (Chloe Sevigny). He is engaged to rich, young Evelyn Williams (Reese Witherspoon), but is involved in an affair with rich drug-popper Courtney Rawlinson (Samantha Mathis). His peers and friends are as conceited as he is, if not more so. But there is one thing even his associates don't know about Patrick Bateman: he is a psychopathic killer, on a rapid descent into murderous hell. He starts out small and inconspicuously, but then the bodies and body parts pile up. Pretty soon, a Detective Kimball (Willem Dafoe) is on the trail, but Bateman finds the increasingly regular urges for slaughter too hard to resist.

American Psycho takes a very scathing look at the excessive 80s lifestyle.This is a cold, rarefied world where status is attained through how beautiful a business card looks, or whether one can book a table at the latest "it" restaurant. Patrick Bateman has everything going for him, but something snaps in his mind and he goes on a bloody rampage. He orchestrates executions while dissecting 80s pop icons like Phil Collins and Whitney Houston. Like American Beauty, another recent look at superficialities in American society, American Psycho is darkly funny and very entertaining. The cold, detached, almost inhuman accent that Bateman provides as a voice-over adds to the bleakness pervading the whole film. The ending is a surprise, but the tragedy as personified in Bateman is only beginning.

Much of the success of American Psycho is due to the excellent performance of British actor Christian Bale. Having played the innocent boy in Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun, he has now matured into a fine, capable actor. There is rarely a frame in the film without him, and he convinces us of his madness, the suffocation, the exhilaration of the kill, and, ultimately, the despair. It is probably too early to suggest Academy Award nominations, but Bale's is one of the best performances so far this year. Reese Witherspoon (Election, Cruel Intentions) and Samantha Mathis (Broken Arrow, The American President) do fine renditions of spoiled, pampered, rich, young women, though they're only in the film for a total of about thirty minutes. Cara Seymour is also good as the prostitute who gets more than she bargained for when she accepts Bateman's offer once too often.

Independent filmmaker Mary Harron has crafted a fine adaptation of what must be one of the most controversial novels in the last twenty years. She has not only managed to convey the insanity, but the inhuman, uncaring, coldness, of the excessive decade that was the 80s. Stamped with a bravura performance by Christian Bale, American Psycho is a challenging, thought-provoking, and, most of all, very good film.

(c) Joe Wong (13 August 2000)