Film Review: American Psycho

Director: Marry Harron

A 2000 satirically dark comedy, based on the now infamous book by Bret Easton Ellis of the same name. It was always said that the book was too violent and complex to be made into a film, having read the book I don't think I've ever seen anything that would be harder to make into a film. Before viewing the film I felt it would either be a long epic covering every subtle nuance from the book or a quick short film that just covers the basic storyline, as it turns out they went for the latter.

Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) attacking someone with an axe 

Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) is a wealthy investment banker who lives along in an impressive Manhattan apartment. His life generally involves eating in upmarket restaurants, wearing expensive designer clothes and look great amongst his equally shallow friends and work colleagues. However he is also secretly a complete psychopath whose main aim is to torture and kill his victims.

Harron does a good job of pulling together a richly complex book into a narrative fit for the big screen, its almost a nostalgia piece to the late 80's with its gaudy sets, bad suits and cheesy 80's pop. The violence is toned down a lot from the book which is to be expected but its actually very tame indeed compared to similarly violent flicks of the time. The whole film is very distant and sanitized which I guess was a deliberate move by Harron to reflect this quality in the characters who are actually all very distant from one another. Bale is excellent in the lead although quite different from how I imagined Bateman to be.

Patrick Bateman contemplates killing his secretary Jean (Chloe Sevigny)

The ambiguity over how reliable Bateman is as the source for this narrative is largely untouched within the film, there are still the trademark scenes from the book (police cars blowing up. conversation with his lawyer and everyone mistaken Bateman for someone else) but the actual question is largely ignored. The film world demands much more answers than the world of writing so we almost have to believe what Bateman is doing is actually happening which removes some of the mystery and allure.

The snappy back and forths between Bateman and his colleagues are rather poor to say the least, it lacks the dynamism that is displayed in the book which is something that cannot be blamed on the transition between mediums. This makes the final acts of the film more tiresome than they should be as we rumble on from the violence to see what will become of Patrick Bateman. But I feel my criticisms are probably on the harsh side, mainly because I adore the book so much.

2.5/4 A good effort to film the unfilm-able book