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"Fight Club" is the most frankly and cheerfully fascist big-star movie since " Death Wish ," a celebration of violence in which the heroes write themselves a license to drink, smoke, screw and beat one another up.

Sometimes, for variety, they beat up themselves. It's macho porn -- the sex movie Hollywood has been moving toward for years, in which eroticism between the sexes is replaced by all-guy locker-room fights. Women, who have had a lifetime of practice at dealing with little-boy posturing, will instinctively see through it; men may get off on the testosterone rush. The fact that it is very well made and has a great first act certainly clouds the issue.

Edward Norton stars as a depressed urban loner filled up to here with angst. He describes his world in dialogue of sardonic social satire. His life and job are driving him crazy. As a means of dealing with his pain, he seeks out 12-step meetings, where he can hug those less fortunate than himself and find catharsis in their suffering. It is not without irony that the first meeting he attends is for post-surgical victims of testicular cancer, since the whole movie is about guys afraid of losing their cojones.

These early scenes have a nice sly tone; they're narrated by the Norton character in the kind of voice Nathanael West used in Miss Lonelyhearts. He's known only as the Narrator, for reasons later made clear. The meetings are working as a sedative, and his life is marginally manageable when tragedy strikes: He begins to notice Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) at meetings. She's a "tourist" like himself--someone not addicted to anything but meetings. She spoils it for him. He knows he's a faker, but wants to believe everyone else's pain is real.

On an airplane, he has another key encounter, with Tyler Durden ( Brad Pitt ), a man whose manner cuts through the fog. He seems able to see right into the Narrator's soul, and shortly after, when the Narrator's high-rise apartment turns into a fireball, he turns to Tyler for shelter. He gets more than that. He gets in on the ground floor of Fight Club, a secret society of men who meet in order to find freedom and self-realization through beating one another into pulp.

It's at about this point that the movie stops being smart and savage and witty, and turns to some of the most brutal, unremitting, nonstop violence ever filmed. Although sensible people know that if you hit someone with an ungloved hand hard enough, you're going to end up with broken bones, the guys in "Fight Club" have fists of steel, and hammer one another while the sound effects guys beat the hell out of Naugahyde sofas with Ping-Pong paddles. Later, the movie takes still another turn. A lot of recent films seem unsatisfied unless they can add final scenes that redefine the reality of everything that has gone before; call it the Keyser Soze syndrome.

What is all this about? According to Durden, it is about freeing yourself from the shackles of modern life, which imprisons and emasculates men. By being willing to give and receive pain and risk death, Fight Club members find freedom. Movies like " Crash " (1997), must play like cartoons for Durden. He's a shadowy, charismatic figure, able to inspire a legion of men in big cities to descend into the secret cellars of a Fight Club and beat one another up.

Only gradually are the final outlines of his master plan revealed. Is Tyler Durden in fact a leader of men with a useful philosophy? "It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything," he says, sounding like a man who tripped over the Nietzsche display on his way to the coffee bar in Borders. In my opinion, he has no useful truths. He's a bully--Werner Erhard plus S & M, a leather club operator without the decor. None of the Fight Club members grows stronger or freer because of their membership; they're reduced to pathetic cultists. Issue them black shirts and sign them up as skinheads. Whether Durden represents hidden aspects of the male psyche is a question the movie uses as a loophole--but is not able to escape through, because "Fight Club" is not about its ending but about its action.

Of course, "Fight Club" itself does not advocate Durden's philosophy. It is a warning against it, I guess; one critic I like says it makes "a telling point about the bestial nature of man and what can happen when the numbing effects of day-to-day drudgery cause people to go a little crazy." I think it's the numbing effects of movies like this that cause people go to a little crazy. Although sophisticates will be able to rationalize the movie as an argument against the behavior it shows, my guess is that audience will like the behavior but not the argument. Certainly they'll buy tickets because they can see Pitt and Norton pounding on each other; a lot more people will leave this movie and get in fights than will leave it discussing Tyler Durden's moral philosophy. The images in movies like this argue for themselves, and it takes a lot of narration (or Narration) to argue against them.

Lord knows the actors work hard enough. Norton and Pitt go through almost as much physical suffering in this movie as Demi Moore endured in " G.I. Jane ," and Helena Bonham Carter creates a feisty chain-smoking hellcat who is probably so angry because none of the guys thinks having sex with her is as much fun as a broken nose. When you see good actors in a project like this, you wonder if they signed up as an alternative to canyoneering.

The movie was directed by David Fincher and written by Jim Uhls , who adapted the novel by Chuck Palahniuk . In many ways, it's like Fincher's movie " The Game " (1997), with the violence cranked up for teenage boys of all ages. That film was also about a testing process in which a man drowning in capitalism ( Michael Douglas ) has the rug of his life pulled out from under him and has to learn to fight for survival. I admired "The Game" much more than "Fight Club" because it was really about its theme, while the message in "Fight Club" is like bleeding scraps of Socially Redeeming Content thrown to the howling mob.

Fincher is a good director (his work includes "Alien 3," one of the best-looking bad movies I have ever seen, and " Seven ," the grisly and intelligent thriller). With "Fight Club" he seems to be setting himself some kind of a test--how far over the top can he go? The movie is visceral and hard-edged, with levels of irony and commentary above and below the action. If it had all continued in the vein explored in the first act, it might have become a great film. But the second act is pandering and the third is trickery, and whatever Fincher thinks the message is, that's not what most audience members will get. "Fight Club" is a thrill ride masquerading as philosophy--the kind of ride where some people puke and others can't wait to get on again.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

Fight Club (1999)

Rated R For Extreme Violence, Sex

139 minutes

Meat Loaf Aday as Robert Paulsen

Edward Norton as Narrator

Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden

Jared Leto as Angel Face

Helena Bonham-Carter as Marla Singer

Based On The Novel by

Chuck Palahniuk

Directed by

David Fincher

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Fight Club Review

12 Nov 1999

139 minutes

Surfing a boiling wave of utterly predictable tabloid controversy, This Monstrous Movie (® Daily Mail) seems to be 1999's Crash/NBK/Reservoir Dogs, a film so devastatingly toxic that its very existence is not only responsible for every post-kebab scuffle, but the soaring divorce rate, teenage alcoholism and the terminal inadequacy of frozen pizza.

In fact, though definitely not one for the kiddiewinks, Fincher's film is a molasses-black comedy shot through with his blistering, hyper-kinetic style, a score that punches you in the chest, and standout performances from Pitt and Norton. And sadly, it's afflicted with one flaw that just ejects it from the masterpiece category.

Our narrator, 'Jack' (Norton), is a directionless everybloke who, when not weathering humiliating chewings-out at work, exists as an inadequate nighthawk, trying to cure his chronic insomnia by fixing on the synthetic sympathy of assorted nocturnal self-help groups. Solace is finally found with his head enveloped in a sobbing Meatloaf's pendulous 'bitch tits', while attending a support group for men with testicular cancer (told you this was black). The symbolism couldn't be clearer - if Jack isn't actually ball-less, he might as well be.

Something obviously has to give, and it does when Jack meets Tyler Durden (Pitt) on the plane home from a business trip. He arrives back at his apartment to find it in ruins - having mysteriously exploded in a fiery Armageddon of Ikea - so he calls Tyler, who invites him to crash round his place. And then invites him to punch him in the kisser. Which he does, and soon they're scrapping like squaddies in the car park, and enjoying it - the simple act of mano-a-mano rucking reminding Jack not only that he's alive, but that he's a he.

The craze spreads, and fight clubs start springing up all over the country with Tyler as their charismatic leader. But Tyler has a hidden agenda, and before Jack knows it, he's extending his organisation's activities into surreal random acts of anti-capitalist terrorism - the highly secret Project Mayhem. Starbucks coffee houses are razed. Corporate art is demolished. And rich, vain women have their own liposuctioned lard sold back to them as classy soap.

There are so many ways to read Fight Club that it's almost impossible to know where to start. Is it a fascistic call to action for a generation of dickless wonders? A homoerotic love story in which Jack is reintroduced to his nads before being carried off in Tyler's pneumatic arms? A satire on modern feminism's cartoonish views of what men are like, or...? Well, have a go yourself. It's half the fun.

The other half is Fincher's scorching style. From an opening title sequence that out-Sevens Seven's, he presents a maelstrom of celluloid sorcery. Flash cuts, subliminal images, fake cue dots, jumping film... it's a howling monster of a movie that virtually sticks its ravening snout out of the screen and bites you.

Norton is as fine as ever, but Pitt is the standout, lending Tyler a beguiling sense of glamour and danger, while the fights themselves - vicious brawls accompanied by the sound of cracking bones - herald the movie's most subversive image: men's blood-drenched, caved-in heads sporting huge, almost post-coital, smiles.

But then it starts to go awry. From the moment Project Mayhem is instituted, some of the sly blackness leaks out, and after a slew of implausibilities in the last half hour - including a twist out of the bottom of a cornflakes packet - it degenerates into an entertaining but vacuous comedy. Finally, having lost the courage of its gleefully nasty convictions, it concludes with a tiny burp of a bad gag. In the end, Fincher's brilliant film is, ironically, short in the cojones department - and if he wants to argue about it, we'd be happy to. Outside.

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Fight Club Reviews

From the guitar roar on the Dust Brothers' opening title track through to the thundering drums of Pixies' Where Is My Mind? it is pure synapse-splitting sensory overload and the road that commercial cinema refused to take.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 15, 2024

Fight Club did indeed fly over the heads of audiences expecting straight macho action thrills, as opposed to a mind-messing critique of the same, as well as capitalism, material acquisition, masculinity and other sacred cows of national identity.

Full Review | Feb 14, 2024

Fight Club is very, very, very good.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 26, 2023

With an absolutely brilliant direction and execution, David Fincher uses Jim Uhls’ captivating, layered, unconventional screenplay to tackle themes such as consumerism, society’s behavior, and mental health.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jul 24, 2023

David Fincher’s adaptation of the Chuck Palahniuk novel is a shrewd and expertly crafted study of the male in crisis.

Full Review | May 24, 2023

It seems like the male characters in Fight Club would be a whole lot happiernot to mention healthierif they could express respect and affection through the magic of gay sex.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 20, 2022

The first rule of Fight Club, as we're constantly reminded, might not be to talk about it, but once seen, it is most certainly not forgotten, even 22 years on.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 4, 2021

Let's not get away from the fact that Fight Club is awesome.

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Jun 26, 2021

David Fincher is an interesting director whose films more often than not work for me, Fight Club is a notable exception.

Full Review | Apr 1, 2021

Shocking violence, utter chaos, spirited editing, and mindfuck finales can be found elsewhere. Pitt haranguing a squirrelly Norton everyman on consumerist ideals, however, is forever.

Full Review | Feb 17, 2021

Cult films are seldom great films, they just connect with a corner of the audience more intensely than was intended, elevating their status. That's "Fight Club." And appealing to the wrong sort of cult just makes that clearer.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 31, 2021

It's bold, it's gritty, it's rebellious, it's unapologetic, it takes risks, and it's narrator reflects the frustrations of many people.

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Dec 17, 2020

Unsubtle subliminal messages pair with skewed perceptions to demonstrate overstressed stylization and a hopelessly circuitous plot.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 11, 2020

'Fight Club' examines David Fincher's portrait of toxic masculinity from the female gaze.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | May 22, 2020

Brad Pitt and Edward Norton are both perfect in David Fincher's anarchic, moody and violent film. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 23, 2020

Perhaps it is postmodern filmmaking, whatever that means. In any case, Fight Club remains the ugliest, most inhuman film since Natural Born Killers.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Apr 7, 2020

The film's tongue is far too firmly in its cheek at all points of its discourse to ever take its characters' actions too much at face value.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 31, 2019

The movie demands a certain attention and is not easily dismissed, but there is something deeply unsettling about a work that uncritically espouses brutality as a function of alienation and nonconformity.

Full Review | Oct 15, 2019

Pitt dominates the screen every second he's on it, and it simultaneously represents his weirdest, funniest and most charismatic role of his career.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 11, 2019

Filmmaker David Fincher has, perhaps notoriously, infused Fight Club with a decidedly off-kilter sort of vibe that's reflected in its various attributes...

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 2, 2019

Cinephile Corner

Movie Reviews, Rankings, Film News and More

Fight Club Movie Review: David Fincher’s Stylized Depiction of Anarchy

Fight club stars edward norton and brad pitt and is directed by david fincher.

Review: Released over two decades ago, David Fincher’s Fight Club remains in popular culture the way few films ever do. A movie that often resonates with those feeling marginalized by society, Fight Club lives on for each generation to interpret in new ways.

In the realm of modern cinema, where conformity often reigns supreme, there exists a dark, subversive gem that has left an indelible mark on the collective psyche of film enthusiasts. Enter Fight Club , David Fincher’s anarchic odyssey into the depths of identity, masculinity, and consumerism. Two decades since its release, the film endures as a provocative, if not controversial, exploration of the human condition.

Fight Club embraces chaos from the very outset. With a narrative structure as fractured as its characters’ minds, it delivers a punch to the gut of traditional storytelling. Edward Norton’s nameless protagonist narrates his life’s descent into soul-crushing monotony with a bleak cynicism. In a bid to regain a sense of self, he stumbles upon Tyler Durden, brought to life with devilish charisma by Brad Pitt. This unholy union sparks the birth of an underground fight club, a secret society where men are free to strip themselves of societal expectations and embrace raw, primal instincts.

Yet, beneath the brutal fisticuffs lies a cerebral battleground where Fight Club grapples with themes that are more pertinent today than ever. It raises questions about consumerism and the commodification of human existence, challenging us to confront the shallow materialism that often defines our lives. As our unnamed protagonist and Tyler spiral deeper into their underground world, the film forces viewers to question their own reality, mirroring the identity crisis that plagues the characters.

Edward Norton and Brad Pitt , two industry juggernauts at the peak of their power, stand at the epicenter of Fight Club ‘s visceral brilliance. Norton, as the tormented narrator, portrays his character’s descent into madness with a nuanced performance that captures both vulnerability and an unsettling allure. In contrast, Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden oozes a charismatic charm that’s simultaneously magnetic and menacing. The dynamic between these two actors is electrifying, providing a constant undercurrent of tension.

David Fincher’s directorial signature is etched into every frame of Fight Club . He thrusts us into an unapologetically dark and gritty world, immersing us in a sensory overload of pulsating visuals and relentless, no-holds-barred camera work. Fincher’s intimate close-ups dissect the characters’ inner turmoil, making us voyeurs to their darkest secrets. The director’s fearless approach to depicting violence, debauchery, and anarchy adds to the film’s unnerving ambiance.

The film’s cinematography, masterfully executed by Jeff Cronenweth , captures the essence of chaos and despair. It employs a dark and gritty palette, highlighting the grimy underbelly of the characters’ lives. The use of handheld cameras immerses us in the frenetic energy of the fight club, emphasizing the raw physicality of the brawls. Fincher’s collaboration with editor James Haygood is equally praiseworthy, as they construct a narrative that blurs the line between reality and delusion. The editing rhythm mirrors the protagonist’s fractured state of mind, creating a disorienting and intense experience for the audience.

Reviews for Movies from David Fincher

While Norton and Pitt command the spotlight, Fight Club boasts a supporting cast that adds layers of complexity to the narrative. Helena Bonham Carter as Marla Singer injects a sense of nihilistic apathy, mirroring the protagonists’ disillusionment. Meat Loaf’s role as Bob, a member of the fight club, offers a poignant glimpse into the lives of the club’s members. The characters are a testament to Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, from which the Fight Club is adapted, and their portrayals contribute to the film’s rich tapestry of despair and rebellion.

Two decades after its initial release, Fight Club stands at a crossroads. While some consider it a timeless classic, others argue that it’s become a relic of the late 1990s, a time capsule of a specific cultural moment. Indeed, the film’s portrayal of anti-corporate sentiments, culminating in explosive anarchy, seems to speak to a particular era. Yet, its exploration of existential crisis and the quest for identity continues to resonate in a society grappling with similar questions. There’s enough on the bone that still feels prescient, even if much of Fight Club looks and feels like an era that’s passed.

Fight Club is not just a film for many; it’s an ideology, a subversive manifesto that refuses to fade into cinematic obscurity. Its legacy has transcended the silver screen, leaving an indelible mark on pop culture, inspiring real-life fight clubs, and continuing to fuel passionate debates on its merits and messages. Even in an age of digital identities and disconnection, the film’s exploration of what it means to be human remains hauntingly relevant.

Fight Club is certainly a cinematic enigma. It’s a visceral ride that dissects the human psyche while challenging our perceptions of conformity, consumerism, and chaos. It may not be David Fincher’s best movie, but its influence on modern filmmaking and its unwavering ability to provoke and perplex stand as testaments to its enduring power. So, to echo Tyler Durden’s words, perhaps it’s time to reevaluate our perceptions and embark on a journey back to the bleak-yet-thrilling world of Fight Club .

Genre: Drama

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Fight Club Movie Cast and Credits

Edward Norton as The Narrator

Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden

Helena Bonham Carter as Marla Singer

Meat Loaf as Bob

Jared Leto as Angel Face

Zach Grenier as Richard Chesler

Holt McCallany as The Mechanic

Eion Bailey as Ricky

Director: David Fincher

Writers: Jim Uhls , Chuck Palahniuk (Original Writer)

Cinematography: Jeff Cronenweth

Editor: James Haygood

Composer: John King , Michael Simpson

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October 15, 1999 FILM REVIEW 'Fight Club': Such a Very Long Way From Duvets to Danger Related Articles The New York Times on the Web: Current Film Video Selected Scenes and Trailer From the Film 'Fight Club' Forum Join a Discussion on Current Film By JANET MASLIN f the two current films in which buttoned-down businessmen rebel against middle-class notions of masculinity, David Fincher's savage "Fight Club" is by far the more visionary and disturbing. Where "American Beauty" hinges on the subversive allure of a rose-covered blond cheerleader, Fincher has something a good deal tougher in mind. The director of "Seven" and "The Game" for the first time finds subject matter audacious enough to suit his lightning-fast visual sophistication, and puts that style to stunningly effective use. Lurid sensationalism and computer gamesmanship left this filmmaker's earlier work looking hollow and manipulative. But the sardonic, testosterone-fueled science fiction of "Fight Club" touches a raw nerve. In a film as strange and single-mindedly conceived as "Eyes Wide Shut," Fincher's angry, diffidently witty ideas about contemporary manhood unfold. As based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk (and deftly written by Jim Uhls), it builds a huge, phantasmagorical structure around the search for lost masculine authority, and attempts to psychoanalyze an entire society in the process. Complete with an even bigger narrative whammy than the one that ends "The Sixth Sense," this film twists and turns in ways that only add up fully on the way out of the theater and might just require another viewing. Fincher uses his huge arsenal of tricks to bury little hints at what this story is really about. "Fight Club" has two central figures, the milquetoast narrator played by Edward Norton and his charismatic, raging crony played by Brad Pitt. The narrator has been driven to the edge of his sanity by a dull white-collar job, an empty fondness for material things ("I'd flip through catalogues and wonder what kind of dining set defined me as a person") and the utter absence of anything to make him feel alive. Tormented by insomnia, he finds his only relief in going to meetings of 12-step support groups, where he can at least cry. The film hurtles along so smoothly that its meaningfully bizarre touches, like Meat Loaf Aday as a testicular cancer patient with very large breasts, aren't jarring at all. The narrator finds a fellow 12-step addict in Marla, played with witchy sensuality by Helena Bonham Carter and described by the script as "the little scratch on the roof of your mouth that would heal if only you could stop tonguing it -- but you can't." As that suggests, Marla's grunge recklessness makes a big impression on the film's narrator, and can mostly be blamed for setting the story in motion. Soon after meeting her he is on an airplane, craving any sensation but antiseptic boredom, and he meets Pitt's Tyler Durden in the next seat. Surveying the bourgeois wimp he nicknames Ikea Boy, Tyler asks all the hard questions. Like: "Why do guys like you and I know what a duvet is?" Norton, drawn into Tyler's spell, soon forsakes his tidy ways and moves into the abandoned wreck that is ground central for Tyler. Then Tyler teaches his new roommate to fight in a nearby parking lot. The tacitly homoerotic bouts between these two men become addictive (as does sex with Marla), and their fight group expands into a secret society, all of which the film presents with the curious matter-of-factness of a dream. Somehow nobody gets hurt badly, but the fights leave frustrated, otherwise emasculated men with secret badges of not-quite-honor. "Fight Club" watches this form of escapism morph into something much more dangerous. Tyler somehow builds a bridge from the anti-materialist rhetoric of the 1960s ("It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything") into the kind of paramilitary dream project that Ayn Rand might have admired. The group's rigorous training and subversive agenda are as deeply disturbing to Norton's mild-mannered character as Tyler's original wild streak was thrilling. But even when acts of terrorism are in the offing, he can't seem to tear himself away. Like Kevin Smith's "Dogma," "Fight Club" sounds offensive from afar. If watched sufficiently mindlessly, it might be mistaken for a dangerous endorsement of totalitarian tactics and super-violent nihilism in an all-out assault on society. But this is a much less gruesome film than "Seven" and a notably more serious one. It means to explore the lure of violence in an even more dangerously regimented, dehumanized culture. That's a hard thing to illustrate this powerfully without, so to speak, stepping on a few toes. In an expertly shot and edited film spiked with clever computer-generated surprises, Fincher also benefits, of course, from marquee appeal. The teamwork of Norton and Pitt is as provocative and complex as it's meant to be. Norton, an ingenious actor, is once again trickier than he looks. Pitt struts through the film with rekindled brio and a visceral sense of purpose. He's right at home in a movie that warns against worshiping false idols. PRODUCTION NOTES 'FIGHT CLUB' Rating: "Fight Club" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes bloody fights, grisly touches, sexual situations and nudity, profanity and assorted intentional gross-out shocks, including the rendering of human fat into soap. Directed by David Fincher; written by Jim Uhls, based on the novel "Fight Club," by Chuck Palahniuk; director of photography, Jeff Cronenweth; edited by James Haygood; music by the Dust Brothers; production designer, Alex McDowell; produced by Art Linson, Cean Chaffin and Ross Grayson Bell; released by Fox 2000 Pictures. Running time: 135 minutes. Cast: Brad Pitt (Tyler Durden), Edward Norton (Narrator), Helena Bonham Carter (Marla Singer), Robert (Meat Loaf Aday) and Jared Leto (Angel Face).

Fight Club (United States, 1999)

With its kinetic style, visceral approach, compelling storyline, and powerful social message, Fight Club makes a commanding case to be considered the '90s version of A Clockwork Orange . In a time when so few motion pictures leave an impact, Fight Club refuses to be ignored or dismissed. The experience lingers, demanding to be pondered and considered, and, unlike 95% of modern-day thrillers, there is a great deal here to think about and argue over. Fight Club presents an overload of thought-provoking material that works on so many levels as to offer grist for the mills of thousands of reviews, feature articles, and post-screening conversations.

Pre-release interest in Fight Club was understandably high, primarily because of those involved with the project. Jim Uhls' script is based on an influential novel by Chuck Palahniuk (a book that, while not required material in schools, has consumed the free time of countless readers). The lead actor is the ever-popular Brad Pitt, who makes his strongest bid to date to shed his pretty boy image and don the mantle of a serious thespian. Those dubious about Pitt's ability to pull this off in the wake of his recent attempts in Seven Years in Tibet (which is briefly referenced as an in-joke during Fight Club ) and Meet Joe Black will suffer a change of heart after seeing this film. Pitt's male co-star, Edward Norton, is widely recognized as one of the most intelligent and versatile performers of his generation. And Fight Club 's director, David Fincher, has already made a huge artistic impression on movie-goers with only three features to his credit: Alien 3, Seven (starring Pitt), and The Game . Mix these elements together in Fox's publicity blender, and Fight Club will not carry the title of "Best Movie of 1999 That No One Saw."

The film begins by introducing us to our narrator, Jack, who is brilliantly portrayed by Norton. A chameleon of an actor, Norton seems perfectly suited to every role he plays, whether it's the seemingly-wronged defendant in Primal Fear or the white supremacist in American History X . Here, the actor flows fluidly into the part of a cynical but mild-mannered employee of a major automobile manufacturer who is suffering from a bout of insomnia. When he visits his doctor for a remedy, the disinterested physician tells him to stop whining and visit a support group for testicular cancer survivors if he wants to meet people who really have problems. So Jack does exactly that - and discovers that interacting with these victims gives him an emotional release that allows him to sleep. Soon, he is addicted to attending support group meetings, and has one lined up for each night of the week. That's where he meets Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter, looking nothing like the poster girl for British period pieces), another "faker." Unlike Jack, however, she attends purely for the voyeuristic entertainment value.

Then, on what can be described as the worst day of his life (an airline loses his luggage and his apartment unit explodes, destroying all of his possessions), Jack meets the flamboyant Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a soap salesman with an unconventional view of life. Since Jack is in need of a place to live, Tyler invites him to move in, and the two share a "dilapidated house in a toxic waste part of town." Tyler teaches Jack lessons about freedom and empowerment, and the two begin to physically fight each other as a means of release and rebirth. Soon, others find out about this unique form of therapy, and Fight Club is born - an underground organization (whose first and second rules are: "You do not talk about Fight Club") that encourages men to beat up each other. But this is only the first step in Tyler's complex master plan.

In addition to lead actors Pitt, Norton, and Bonham Carter, all of whom do impeccable work, there are a pair of notable supporting players. The first is Meat Loaf (yes, that Meat Loaf), who portrays the ineffectual Bob. It's a surprisingly strong performance, with the singer-turned-actor capturing the nuances of a complex character. Jared Leto, who is becoming better known to audiences (he was recently in The Thin Red Line ), is the blond Angel Face.

Told in a conventional fashion, Fight Club would still have been engaging. However, Fincher's gritty, restless style turns it into a visual masterpiece. The overall experience is every bit as surreal as watching Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange . This is a tale that unfolds in an eerie alternate universe where the melodies of life have the same rhythm as in ours but are in a different key. Fincher also shows just enough restraint that his flourishes seem like important parts of the storytelling method instead of gimmicks. And there are a lot of them. In one scene, a character's apartment is laid out like a page in a furniture catalog, complete with text blurbs superimposed on the screen describing the various pieces. There are occasional single frame interruptions that flash by so quickly that they may pass unnoticed. The film opens with a truly inventive close-up - one that literally gets under the skin. Also in play: a non-linear chronology, a voiceover by a narrator who might not be entirely reliable, frequent breaking of the fourth wall, and an occasional freeze-frame. As was true of Fincher's other three films, Fight Club is dark and fast-paced. There's not a lot of time for introspection. One could call this MTV style, but, unlike many equally frantic movies, there's a reason for each quick cut beyond preventing viewers from becoming bored.

Perhaps the most discussed aspect of Fight Club will be its attitude towards and graphic depiction of violence. Even before the film's official premiere, voices have been raised claiming that the movie glorifies violence by portraying it as something positive. This was the complaint leveled against A Clockwork Orange , which, less than three decades after its controversial release, is universally regarded as a classic. There's no denying that Fight Club is a violent movie. Some sequences are so brutal that a portion of the viewing audience will turn away. (The scene that caused me to wince was when one character reached into his mouth and pulled out a loose tooth.) But the purpose of showing all this bloody pummeling is to make a telling point about the bestial nature of man and what can happen when the numbing effects of day-to-day drudgery cause people to go a little crazy. The men who become members of Fight Club are victims of the dehumanizing and desensitizing power of modern-day society. They have become cogs in a wheel. The only way they can regain a sense of individuality is by getting in touch with the primal, barbaric instincts of pain and violence.

In A Clockwork Orange , Kubrick depicted the actions of the Droogs but did not condone it. This is Fincher's approach in Fight Club . As the film progresses, he systematically reveals each new turn in an ever-deepening spiral that descends into darkness and madness. There's also a heavy element of satire and black comedy. Macabre humor can be found everywhere, from the pithy quips traded by Jack and Tyler to the way Jack interacts with his boss. When combined together, the satire, violence, and unpredictable narrative make a lasting and forceful statement about modern-day society. It's a timely message that hints at why there are post office shootings and kids in schools killing their fellow students. By blaming movies like Fight Club for real-life horrors, politicians want us to look at the world through rose-colored glasses that they have tinted. Instead, Fincher offers a clear, uncompromising portrait that disturbs because it is perceptive and defies the facile answers proffered by elected officials. Movies are not to blame. Guns are not to blame. People and the society that has spawned and stifled them are.

The film has a scope not hinted at in the trailers. After all, how could 139 minutes of untrained boxers beating the hell out of each other be interesting? Fight Club doesn't need to address that question, because its agenda is much larger. To reveal more, however, would be to disclose twists and surprises best left for each viewer to uncover during his or her own movie-going experience. Of course, as is true of all great films, it is possible to know the entire plot of Fight Club beforehand and still be blown away by the experience.

Without going into specifics, I can state that there is a structural similarity to The Sixth Sense . Here, however, the twist is not the whole point of the movie, and it is integrated more effectively into the overall story. If you figure out the so-called "surprise" in The Sixth Sense before the director wants you to, it's difficult to see that film as more than an overlong, uneven example of overt manipulation. The opposite is true of Fight Club , which possesses the depth and breadth to command the attention and respect of anyone who unveils the central conceit before it is explicitly revealed. It's also worth noting that this doesn't happen at the very end, so, while it is an important aspect of Fight Club , it does not dictate the movie's success or failure.

It remains to be seen whether Fight Club will generate any Oscars. The strength of the writing, direction, and acting justifies a stream of nominations, but quality has never been the driving factor in who is recognized by the Academy. Regardless of how it is received in February, when the nominations are announced, Fight Club is a memorable and superior motion picture - a rare movie that does not abandon insight in its quest to jolt the viewer. This marriage of adrenaline and intelligence will make Fight Club a contender for many Best 10 lists at the end of 1999.

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By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Guaranteed: Fight Club will blow your skirt up. It’s not just the rush of seeing Edward Norton, Brad Pitt and director David Fincher hit career peaks in a groundbreaking film. And it’s not the sick kick of watching Gen X amateurs bare-knuckling each other in seedy basements; that’d get old fast. The film’s bold, bruising humor leaves marks on a wide range of hot-button issues: It’s about being young, male and powerless against the pacifying drug of consumerism. It’s about solitude, despair and bottled-up rage. It’s about how not to feel dead as Y2K approaches. It’s about daring to imagine the disenfranchised reducing the world to rubble and starting over.

For daring to imagine, Fight Club will take a few hits. Fincher’s film of Chuck Palahniuk’s 1996 novel – with a high-voltage script by newcomer Jim Uhls – is already being misinterpreted as an “apology for fascism.” One critic wondered whether Rupert Murdoch’s Fox 2000, the company releasing Fight Club, “knew what it was doing” in spending $70 million on a movie that is “not only anti-capitalism but anti-society and, indeed, anti-God.” My take is that Fight Club is pro-thinking, no matter what deities are offended. Is that threatening? You bet.

Fincher ( Seven , The Game ), superbly served by cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth and editor James Haygood, makes brilliant use of film language to take us inside the head of the story’s narrator (Norton) – a yuppie drone whose mind is on fire with revolutionary ideas. This wired insomniac refers to himself as Jack, after a series of magazine articles in which organs of the human body talk about themselves in the first person (“I Am Jack’s Brain”). Fittingly, the striking first image of Fight Club puts us literally inside Jack’s brain. Driven by turbocharged music from the Dust Brothers, the camera swoops and dives around a vast network of nerve cells, emerging only to catch Jack sucking on a gun barrel thrust down his throat by Pitt’s Tyler Durden: “I Am Jack’s Kinky Libido.”

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It’s Tyler, master of many twisted trades, who puts flesh on Jack’s anarchic fantasies. Tyler the waiter serves no soup he hasn’t whizzed in. Tyler the entrepreneur sells soap that he makes out of fat stolen from liposuction dump sites. Tyler the film projectionist shows family flicks spliced with frames of a lunging red penis or a yawning wet vagina.

You can’t blame Jack for thinking, “I Am Jack’s Raging Envy” as he compares Tyler’s night jobs with his own workaday routine as an auto-safety checker. Lack of sleep has left Jack a frazzled mess. His doctor recommends a visit to a church basement where people with real pain hook up. At a meeting for testicular cancer, Jack is bearhugged by Big Bob (Meat Loaf Aday), a patient whose hormone therapy has given him “bitch tits.” Big Bob – just wait till you see the raw wit and emotion that Loaf invests in the role – doesn’t know that Jack is just a tourist. And Jack is too addicted to the “undivided attention you get when people think you’re dying” to feel guilty.

Jack is soon a support-group junkie – melanomas, blood parasites, you name it. Then another faker, chain-smoking Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), invades his space. Marla figures the groups are “cheaper than a movie, and there’s free coffee.” Bonham Carter, looking like the waif from hell,has never been this tough or terrific. Jack is turned on, but it’s Tyler who nails her (“I Am Jack’s Inflamed Sense of Rejection”).

Tyler moves Jack past support groups by devising fight clubs, where emasculated men bond by punching one another until numbness gives way to feeling. Tyler says a fight club is for guys “who work at jobs they hate to buy things they don’t need;” in a scene of gleeful malice, he destroys Jack’s “Ikea nesting instinct” by bombing his apartment.

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Norton catches lightning in a revelatory performance that keeps delivering miracles of character nuance. He may be the best actor of his generation. Watching Jack beat himself bloody in front of his boss is a high-wire act that belongs in a time capsule. And Pitt, in his riskiest role to date, uses his sexual swagger to subversive comic effect; he’s freer, funnier and freakier than you’ve ever seen him. It’s Tyler who shows Jack how to add nitric acid to soap and make nitro-glycerin. It’s Tyler who turns fight clubs into militias and then bomb squads ready to blast the foundations of the planet’s power base: banks and credit-card companies.

Fincher is a visionary who keeps Fight Club firing on all cylinders, raising hallucinatory hell in ways too satisfying toi spoil here. As for the dissenters, “I Am Jack’s Complete Lack of Surprise”. Fincher’s refusal to moralize and reassure has possed off the watchdogs of virtue. Let ’em bark. They think anything alive is dangerous. Fight Club pulld you in, challenges your prejudices, rocks your world and leaves you laughing in the face of an abyss. It’s alive, all right. It’s also an uncompromising American classic.

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Brad Pitt and Edward Norton in Fight Club.

Fight Club at 20: the prescience and power of David Fincher's drama

The 1999 adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s anarchist novel was misunderstood by some as an agent of chaos but it remains an eerily forward-facing film

W hen David Fincher’s Fight Club was released 20 years ago, it was a crystal ball that was mistaken for a cultural crisis, much like Do the Right Thing had been a decade earlier and perhaps Joker is now. Film-makers who were trying to identify a violence nesting in the culture were accused of trying to incite it – or at least clumsily juggling lit sticks of dynamite. No less an authority than Roger Ebert opened his review of Fincher’s film by calling it “the most frankly and cheerfully fascist big-star movie since Death Wish”, echoing widespread concern that impressionable men would lock into the empowering brutality of Tyler Durden and the army that gathers around him. Viewed from a certain angle, it looked like a recruitment film.

What cannot be predicted, however, is how items like Fight Club will shift during flight. It becomes easier to appreciate the ambiguities of the film when it no longer feels like a clear and present danger. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Fincher’s point of view isn’t confusing or contradictory all these years later, but the culture tends to move quickly from threat to threat, and it’s helpful to have enough distance to see the world it’s depicting more clearly. Whatever you think about Fight Club in 2019, it’s probably not exactly what you thought about it in 1999, if only because so much of what it describes has manifested itself in the real world or been distorted beyond recognition.

Let’s begin at the end, as the film does, when a series of detonations leads to the collapse of downtown office buildings. It wouldn’t even be two years later that a terrorist cell would bring down the World Trade Center towers, those symbols of American financial might, and the motives of al-Qaida and the film’s Project Mayhem are not that dissimilar. Both were attacking the soft center of America as they understood it, except in Fight Club, the idea was to raze the country to the ground and start over, because consumerism had anesthetized it and hollowed out its soul. The final image of two people holding hands as the Pixies’ Where is My Mind? blares on the soundtrack could be seen as nihilistic, but it’s secretly thrilling to imagine the possibilities of starting over after a hard reboot. (It also helps to know that the explosions are about taking down institutions, not people, more The Weather Underground than Osama bin Laden.)

Edward Norton and Brad Pitt in Fight Club

It all begins, as many terrible things do, with the pissy aggrievement of a young white male. Much like Ron Livingston in Office Space, another cult classic from the same year, Edward Norton’s unnamed narrator has gotten tired of the deadening routines that define his life. The difference is that cubicle culture alone isn’t what’s bothering Norton, but his realization that he’s a cog into a terrible corporate machine. His day job is to calculate the necessity of automobile recalls under a formula: “Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don’t do one.” Many of his later actions are explained by the emptiness of being defined by the things he buys – most famously, the Ikea catalog that accounts for the interior of his apartment – but his work matters, too. He knows firsthand that capitalism will let people die if it’s better for the bottom line.

The Narrator’s need to feel something at all draws him first to terminal-disease support groups at the local Episcopal church and later to the anarchist philosophy of Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), who makes him feel the old-fashioned way – by punching him hard in the gut. The twist of Tyler’s true identity – fully earned, incidentally, by the many times Fincher hints at it – says a lot about the conversation the Narrator has with himself about what he thinks he needs and how it develops into a messianic vision that completely gets away from him. But those first punches are an expression of brute masculinity that hit him like a cold splash of water to the face. Men are simple creatures in that way.

As the fight clubs metastasize around the country, Tyler’s pre-brawl speeches shift from stating the rules to spouting off about his generation being “the middle children of history”, without a world war or a Great Depression to give it purpose. (“Our Great War is a spiritual war,” he says. “Our Great Depression is our lives.”) The implication is that all that masculine energy needs an outlet, and since Generation X hasn’t been provided with one, it will have to find some other way to channel its inchoate rage. And it’s here where the film’s meaning can get a little slippery: how much of what Tyler is saying is to be understood as nonsense? And if it’s not nonsense, then how much does the film implicitly endorse?

The fact that the fight clubs lead into Project Mayhem, a full-on terrorist organization, should lay the second question to rest. In his efforts to satisfy a personal need, the Narrator/Tyler has set off a brushfire that rages out of control, and he’s utterly powerless to keep it from consuming the world. Working from Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, Fincher and his screenwriter, Jim Uhls, only identify with their hero(es) up to the point when the narrator/Tyler still has some control over the situation. The film does recognize a phenomenon where men are waking in anger from a culture intended to numb or emasculate them, but it also sees in that the presence of sickening misogyny and the potential for fascism. And contrary to Ebert’s review, it panics right alongside the Narrator, who goes so far as to shoot himself in the head to stop it.

What Fight Club missed in 1999 – and comes oh-so-close to getting – is how much the rage it identifies is connected to white supremacy. But the world it anticipated is now upon us, with a host of Tyler Durdens marshaling attacks on perceived enemies and twisting the meaning of “snowflake”, a term used in Palahniuk’s book and popularized in the movie (ie “You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake”), to taunt the vulnerable. What are the Proud Boys if not a roving gang of Project Mayhem thugs? Or the tiki-torch-bearers of Charlottesville. Fight Club saw it coming, with thrilling vividness and wit and technical panache. Just don’t shoot the messenger.

David Fincher
Chuck Palahniuk
Helena Bonham Carter
Drama films

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Movie Review

In Fight Club young urban professionals are just empty, white-collar drones desperate to find meaning beyond cubicle walls. One (Norton) embarks on a deranged personal odyssey when he learns he can get an adrenaline rush by engaging in bare-knuckle brawls.

His mentor on this journey is Tyler Durden (Pitt), a philosophizing psychopath who denounces consumerism and individualism in favor of pain. A rebel, he splices pornographic images into family films, urinates in people’s food and sells soap made in his kitchen from liposuctioned fat. He’s also a budding terrorist.

The friends start Fight Club, a secret society of men who meet in the basement of a bar and beat each other to a pulp. It is described as a religious experience. “Homework” includes picking fights with strangers, vandalism, arson and leveling high-rises. Norton plays Jekyll to Pitt’s evil Hyde. But in the end, we realize they’re really just two sides of the same person.

The film is visually intriguing, but squanders any style points by fixating on diseased material. For nearly two and a half hours, Fight Club pummels audiences with brutal violence. There’s explicit, callous sexuality. Nudity. Alcohol. Obscene language (over 60 f-words). But the greatest threat to young viewers may be its portrayal of self-inflicted pain as a worthy high.

Teen idol Pitt fights, blows things up, brands a man with acid and crashes into another car … for thrills. Even putting a gun in one’s mouth and pulling the trigger adopts a glamorous veneer. This dangerous Hollywood head trip could inspire similar machismo among distraught males convinced they have nothing to lose.

Bob Smithouser

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What You're Getting Wrong About David Fincher's ‘Fight Club'

Fincher arguably did his job too well.

The Big Picture

Fight Club 's message has been misinterpreted over the years, possibly due to the appeal of Tyler Durden's philosophy and lifestyle.
Tyler Durden's philosophy offers a childlike solution to the disconnect and alienation caused by capitalism, but it lacks real solutions.
Fight Club is a critique of the modern world and toxic masculinity, not a celebration of directionless men. It highlights the commodification of everything and the need for emotional connection and responsibility toward others.

If you ever watched David Fincher ’s electrifying 1999 movie Fight Club and thought, “We should start a fight club!” then congratulations, you have missed the point of Fight Club . When the film was released 23 years ago, it was a lukewarm success at the box office, garnering only $100 million worldwide off a $63 million budget. However, thanks to the burgeoning DVD market, Fight Club quickly found its audience thanks to one of the best DVD releases of all time packed with special features and a message that resonated with audiences. However, that message has been misinterpreted over the years, and that could be due to Fincher’s desire to make Tyler Durden ( Brad Pitt ) so appealing that some folks didn’t see what the larger movie was going for.

An insomniac office worker and a devil-may-care soap maker form an underground fight club that evolves into much more.

What Is 'Fight Club' About?

For those who need a brief recap, David Fincher’s movie, based on Chuck Palahniuk ’s 1996 novel of the same name, follows an unnamed narrator ( Edward Norton ) who suffers from insomnia. Initially able to prey off support groups for the emotional catharsis they provide, that outlet is ruined when he encounters Marla ( Helena Bonham Carter ), who’s also a “faker.” Once again cursed with insomnia, the narrator eventually crosses paths with Tyler Durden, a handsome and charismatic soap salesman who lives the way the narrator wishes he could live. After the narrator’s apartment explodes, he asks for help from Tyler, and Tyler agrees to take him in on the condition that he “hit him as hard as he can.”

This interaction blossoms into Fight Club, which transforms into increasingly destructive acts against society. The narrator eventually realizes that he is Tyler Durden, and he’s been interacting with a figment of his imagination. He shoots himself in the head, killing Tyler but only hitting the narrator’s cheek. The narrator finally accepts that he loves Marla and needs to be rid of Tyler while Tyler’s actions destroy the credit card companies around them, potentially setting off a worldwide financial panic and the collapse of society.

'Fight Club' Is an Easily Misunderstood Story

The reason Fight Club is so easy to misunderstand is that David Fincher's movie beautifully sets up both the narrator’s depression and Tyler’s appeal. The narrator is a victim of capitalism, unable to forge real human connections, so instead he fills his life with stuff. Then you have Tyler, who, at the outset, espouses an alluring philosophy. Tyler represents “freedom” from the modern world. He isn’t dependent on anything. He steals the fat he needs for soap and works odd jobs that allow him to pull juvenile pranks on the world. Tyler, portrayed with utmost confidence by Pitt, has everything figured out and speaks to a post-capitalist malaise where men are trapped by crummy jobs and “cheated” out of the things they were “promised” (being millionaires, movie gods, and rock stars), can only feel alive by beating the crap out of each other in darkened basements.

These elements — the grotesqueness of the narrator’s existence coupled with the appeal of Tyler’s offer — are meant to bring us to the understanding of why anyone would find a fight club interesting in the first place. Fincher puts our sympathies with the narrator, which makes sense since he’s the protagonist. We have to go where he goes and Fincher knows that the audience isn’t just going to automatically accept living in a dilapidated home and punching other dudes for jollies. If Fight Club has a problem, it’s that Fincher makes that lifestyle so interesting that some audience members don’t follow the turn into rejection and see why Tyler’s philosophy is so deeply flawed.

Tyler Durden’s philosophy is essentially one that pinpoints a real problem — the disconnect of the postmodern age fueled by capitalism and alienation — and offers a child’s solution. The narrator is offered a connection with someone real who is actually on his wavelength — Marla — and he rejects her like a small boy who kicks a girl in the shins because he can’t express that he likes her (it should be noted that the small boy’s behavior isn’t worth condoning, but this is how small boys express themselves). Instead, he retreats to a childish impulse of a group of immature men hitting each other in a private club while in their time they play pranks on the world under the banner of “rebellion.”

What Do People Get Wrong About 'Fight Club'?

Where the reaction to Fight Club falls apart isn’t that the film is “unclear” (I don’t think Fincher should have to hold the audience’s hand when he and screenwriter Jim Uhls are fairly direct in what they’re trying to do), it’s that there are some audience members who can’t tell the difference between condoning the actions of Tyler and his cronies and condemning them. Because Tyler’s initial criticism lands, we’re supposed to follow him wherever he goes rather than seeing him for the maniacal cult leader he is. Tearing down society completely, so you can have a pair of leather pants that lasts you the rest of your life is what a teenage boy thinks about changing the world. It’s not a real solution, and Tyler has no solutions. He just offers violence, chaos, and self-destruction and calls it wisdom.

Fight Club doesn’t offer answers to the struggles of the world, but a critique. It’s not a celebration of directionless men, but rather that the modern world has commoditized everything to the point where toxic masculinity becomes a brand. Time has proven that assessment is disturbingly prescient as groups like incels lash out at a world they feel owes them something while failing to look at their own noxious behavior. Tyler’s maxim, “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything,” sounds tempting, but it’s a line about freedom for the sake of self-indulgence rather than responsibility toward others. That’s why the narrator’s arc works at the end . He has rejected this mewling, selfish sensibility to open himself up to Marla. Tyler Durden never once offers emotional connection but merely the illusion of it when it comes after a physical beating.

If a group of people consistently misses the point of Fight Club , does that make Fight Club a bad movie? Does it undermine its core theme? I don’t think that it does because it’s not like the film is universally misunderstood or that Fincher and Uhls didn’t know where they wanted to take this story. What Fight Club understands is that the modern male is in an incredibly tenuous place when he becomes disconnected from his own emotions and healthy ways of expressing those emotions. The narrator starts the film not looking for violence, but simply for an emotional outlet and in a darkly comic fashion goes to a support group. But what he’s looking for is an emotional connection, and while a fight club may offer memorable rules, it offers neither truth nor understanding, only violence.

Fight Club is available to rent on Prime Video in the U.S.

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Actually really good, prepares children for violence, great movie but very mature.

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Anarchistic, Nihilist worldview that distorts truth resulting in complete mayhem with jabs at Christian-based support groups, man picks fight with priest & sprays Bible with mace, & man tells man that God doesn't like you; 55 obscenities & 9 profanities plus urination scene; massive amounts of violence including many bloody, brutal fist fights, car accident, shooting, explosions, man burns man's hand with chemicals & dream of a scary plane crash; depicted fornication & pornography use; obscured full female nudity & brief but graphic image of male genitalia; alcohol use; smoking; and, addiction to support groups, man urinates into food, stealing, disturbing images of advanced stages of dementia.

More Detail:

Police stations around the country may have their hands full after this movie is released, as it powerfully depicts the cult-of-personality in turning lost people toward violence. Bizarre, kinetic, fast-paced, and full of camera tricks and deeply disturbed material, FIGHT CLUB is perhaps the next cult movie (think NATURAL BORN KILLERS meets THE WALL meets THE MATRIX) to entice would-be vigilantes to repeated viewing experiences and/or violence.

At the beginning of the movie, Edward Norton, simply known here as The Narrator, is strapped to a chair in a high rise, with a gun sticking in his mouth. By his side, waits Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). He then tells the audience how he got to be in that position.

Months ago, the Narrator had a cushy job in the corporate world and a cushy apartment in a swank skyscraper. Yet, bored and lonely, he became addicted to addiction self-help groups for company and activity. There he met a big-breasted lug of a man named Bob (Meat Loaf Aday), at a group for men without their manhood, victims of testicular cancer. In another group, the Narrator meets Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), a quirky, deranged suicidal girl who also likes to pose as an addict at such support groups.

One day, the Narrator’s apartment blows up, and he has nowhere to go. He calls a stranger he met on a plane, Tyler Durden, and they become roommates in a dilapidated old house next to a factory. The Narrator is intrigued by Tyler’s bravado and daring speech. One night, when Tyler bets the Narrator to hit him as hard as he can, this becomes the beginning of Fight Club, an underground group of men that whale the tar out of each other at night, just for a rush.

Marla eventually comes to the house, and, soon, she and Tyler are lovers. Bob quits his self-help group and joins Fight Club. In time, the group attracts a large contingent of followers, including many key city officials. The group evolves slowly into a gang, where members prove their strength by enduring days of abuse and then are let into the house to live. Throughout this time, the Narrator and Tyler fund their group by making and selling soap made out of human fat stolen from lyposuction clinics. The group becomes increasingly more violent, and Tyler assigns homework such as getting into a fight with a stranger, simple vandalism and then higher stakes such as large-scale destruction.

Men become blind followers, while the Narrator becomes paranoid at what Fight Club has become. In fact, Tyler is increasingly crazy, and fight clubs are established all over America. The Narrator tries to stop Tyler when he believes that Tyler has gone insane. What he discovers, however, is a horrifying secret that not only implicates him further in a terrible crime involving the supposed bombing of many federal credit buildings, but also a surprise revelation similar to THE SIXTH SENSE or THE USUAL SUSPECTS.

Needless to say, this is not a simple thriller or crime movie. After Columbine and the rise of vigilantism in America, this movie is completely irresponsible. Though Tyler is eventually shut down, he causes lots and lots of damage, including death. Played with great charisma by Brad Pitt, it will be hard not to believe that some young people will emulate him. In general, he is a prankster, urinating into food and splicing pornographic images into family movies. Even more nefarious, he gives the impression of wisdom by spouting half-truths and lies in the form of wise adages, but he twists them for destructive ends. Tyler says that “the things you own, end up owning you.” This may sound good for those trying to get away from American materialism, but to what end? Mother Teresa gave up materialism for a life of service to the poor, not wreckage and carnage.

Some cinephiles may love the cinematography that includes many never seen before images such as a montage that makes the Narrator’s apartment look like the pages of a swank catalogue. The script too, full of wry humor, offbeat statements and crazy details, may attract Academy Award attention. Likewise, Pitt and Norton milk their characters with giddy decadence.

Hysteria and panic seem to be pet themes of Fight Club director David Fincher. Combined with a music-video honed sense of visual style, his movies have been lauded for excellence in their modern depictions of evil. SEVEN put him on the map. The morally better, THE GAME, demonstrated that he who loses his life, will find it. FIGHT CLUB twists this notion around, however. The Narrator didn’t lose his life, he traded it in for a lie of false thrills and experiences. In Tyler, and not the truth, he trusted, resulting in tragedy. Filled with violence and an abandonment of reason and truth for falsehood, it ranks as one of the most dangerous movies released this year.

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Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — Film Analysis — “Fight Club” movie review

"Fight Club" Movie Review

Categories: Film Analysis Movie Review

About this sample

Words: 1041 |

Published: Mar 1, 2019

Words: 1041 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Movie review essay outline, movie review essay example, introduction.

Introduction of the movie "Fight Club" and its initial reception
Mention of the movie's actual genre and surprise ending

Plot Summary

Brief summary of the movie's plot, including the protagonist's transformation into Tyler Durden
Description of Fight Club and its evolution into Project Mayhem
Overview of the movie's dark humor and societal critique
Discussion of the theme of masculinity in a modern society
Discussion of the themes of Consumerism, perfection, and modernity

Consumerism and Materialism

Examination of consumerism as a major aspect of modern American life
Analysis of how the film portrays characters addicted to buying and material possessions
Discussion of the endless cycle of consumerism depicted in the movie

Perfection and Beauty

Exploration of society's emphasis on physical perfection and material wealth
Analysis of how characters in the movie strive to meet societal standards of perfection
Connection between consumerism and the pursuit of perfection
Discussion of the symbolism of soap in the movie
Explanation of how soap represents brutality, sacrifice, and hidden realities
Interpretation of the deeper meaning behind the soap-making process
Recap of the movie's clever delivery of messages and societal satire
Emphasis on the enduring relevance of the movie's themes
Recognition of "Fight Club" as a thought-provoking and psychologically engaging film

Works Cited

Carney, S. (2003). Materialism, masculinity, and existentialism in Fight Club. Journal of American Culture, 26(4), 421-433.
Cooper, C. (2012). Consumerism and existentialism in David Fincher's Fight Club. Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture, 11(1).
Davenport-Hines, R. (2004). Fight Club, masculism, and the crisis of masculinity. The Sociological Review, 52(S1), 69-87.
Fincher, D. (Director). (1999). Fight Club [Motion picture]. 20th Century Fox.
Kimmel, M. (2010). Guyland: The perilous world where boys become men. HarperCollins.
McAleer, J. (2004). Masculinity and consumerism in Fight Club. Journal of Men's Studies, 13(2), 221-235.
McNair, B. (2002). Striptease culture: Sex, media and the democratization of desire. Routledge.
Myers, D. G. (2000). The American paradox: Spiritual hunger in an age of plenty. Yale University Press.
Pappademas, A. (1999). Punch drunk: On masculinity and violence in the movie Fight Club. The Village Voice, 44(49), 35-39.
Sturken, M. (2007). Tourists of history: Memory, kitsch, and consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero. Duke University Press.

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An insomniac office worker and a devil-may-care soap maker form an underground fight club that evolves into much more.
A nameless first person narrator ( Edward Norton ) attends support groups in attempt to subdue his emotional state and relieve his insomniac state. When he meets Marla ( Helena Bonham Carter ), another fake attendee of support groups, his life seems to become a little more bearable. However when he associates himself with Tyler ( Brad Pitt ) he is dragged into an underground fight club and soap making scheme. Together the two men spiral out of control and engage in competitive rivalry for love and power. — Rhiannon
A young man leads a pretty humdrum life assessing car crashes to determine if his automobile company should issue recalls to fix problems. He also suffers from insomnia and takes to attending group therapy sessions for people who have survived various diseases. There he meets Marla who like him attends these sessions though she is neither a victim nor a survivor. His life changes when he meets Tyler Durden on a flight home. Tyler seems to be everything that he's not and together they create a men-only group for bare-knuckle fighting. It soon becomes all the rage with fight clubs springing up across the country and the group itself becoming an anti-capitalist domestic terrorist organization. Tyler and Marla develop a relationship leaving him often on the outside of what is going on. He soon finds that the group is out of control and after a major self-revelation decides there is only one way out. — garykmcd
An insomniac unnamed narrator needs a fantasy to escape from his deadly boring life, he tries joining a cancer support group however the only thing they do in the group is cry into each others chest, but then he is on a plane on his way back from what a viewer would assume is a business trip our unnamed narrator encounters Tyler Durden, a soap selling bad-ass who happens to run a secret fight club in the diner parking lot with his friend who follows 8 simple rules set out by Tyler, our unnamed narrator of course is taken into this scheme ran by Tyler. — ahmetkozan
Posing as a pitiful sufferer during fruitless late-night sessions in highly addictive support groups for terminal illnesses, an unhappy insomniac struggles to find meaning in his mundane and dysfunctional existence. Then, a fateful encounter with the anarchist philosopher and travelling soap salesman, Tyler Durden, changes his life, as--for the first time in a long while--the bored white-collar worker reconnects with his inner self. Much to his surprise, the formerly depressed loner finds himself deriving pleasure out of pain through bare-knuckle brawls in the Fight Club: an underground society of men who yearn to free themselves from the fetters of a cruel modern life. Now, he is ready to wage war. Are violence and freedom the two sides of the same coin? — Nick Riganas
We back out of the webbing of neurons and brain cells as the title credits appear, finding ourselves emerging from a pore on the sweat-glistened skin of the protagonist: our narrator ( Edward Norton ), as he looks down the barrel of a gun that's been stuck in his mouth. The gun is held by a man named Tyler ( Brad Pitt ) who checks his watch, counting down to 'ground zero' before he asks if the narrator has anything to say. The narrator mumbles through the gun before it's removed and says more clearly that he can't think of anything. As Tyler looks out of the high rise window to the dark city below them, the narrator recalls just how he met Tyler before stopping himself and bringing us to the beginning of the story. The narrator tells us he hasn't slept for six months. His job as a traveling product recall specialist for a car company doesn't help his insomnia since he must travel often, experiencing bouts of jet lag in addition to the everyday stress of his position, admiring the 'tiny life' of single-serving soap and shampoo at every location. If he can't sleep, he surfs the channels or browses through "Furni" (a parody of IKEA) catalogs purchasing the next piece of decor to add to his apartment; he's a self-proclaimed slave of consumerism. He goes to his doctor seeking help, but all the doctor will do is suggest an herbal supplement instead of drugs and that the narrator visit a support group for testicular cancer to see real pain. There, the narrator meets Robert 'Bob' Paulson ( Meat Loaf ), the 'big moosie' and an ex-bodybuilder and steroid user who suffers from an extreme case of gynecomastia due to hormone treatment after his testicles were removed. Bob is quite willing to hug the narrator in support. Stuck between Bob's enormous breasts, the narrator finally finds peace and bursts into tears. The emotional release allows him to sleep and he subsequently becomes addicted to support groups, mapping out his week attending different meetings and feigning illness. However, the appearance of a woman named Marla Singer ( Helena Bonham Carter ) throws the narrator's 'system' out of whack. He recognizes her as a 'tourist', having seen her at multiple meetings -- including testicular cancer -- and he is disturbed by her lies to the point where he can't sleep anymore. After one meeting, he confronts her. She argues that she's doing exactly what he does and quips that the groups are 'cheaper than a movie and there's free coffee'. Instead of ratting each other out, they agree to split up the week and exchange numbers. Despite his efforts, the narrator's insomnia continues. On a flight back from one of his business trips, the narrator meets Tyler Durden. Tyler offers a unique perspective on emergency procedure manuals in the plane and they strike up a casual conversation. Tyler is a soap salesman, if he's not working nights as a projectionist and slipping bits of porn between reels at the movie theater where he also works. The narrator arrives at the baggage claim to discover that his suitcase has been confiscated, most likely due to a mysterious vibration, before he taxis home. However, home, a fifteenth story condominium, and it's contents has been blasted into the night by what was theorized to be a faulty gas line ignited by a spark from the refrigerator. Having nowhere to go, the narrator finds Tyler's business card and calls him up. They meet at a bar and share a few beers. While the narrator laments losing his possessions, Tyler shares his philosophy of evolving beyond consumer culture and eschewing material gain. In the parking lot behind the bar where Tyler invites the narrator to hit Tyler as hard as he can. The narrator, though puzzled, complies and they engage in a fist fight before sharing a couple of drinks. The experience is surprisingly euphoric and the narrator and Tyler return to Tyler's dilapidated house where it's clear that Tyler is squatting. Tyler and the narrator engage in more fights behind the bar over the coming days and they soon attract the attention of other 'tough guys'. Finding their little fighting group growing, Tyler establishes a formal 'fight club' in the basement of the bar where they had their first fight. Membership quickly increases and Tyler and the narrator fashion a series of rules, the first two being the same: 'you do not talk about fight club.' The rules are consistently broken, with members inviting their friends to join them. Time and again, Tyler proves his insightful, if unorthodox and immoral, views on life. The narrator meets up with Marla by chance, telling her that he hasn't attended any other meetings because he's joined a new support group for men only. While he still treats her with mild contempt, it's clear that he considers her with interest. When she overdoses on Xanax, she calls the narrator who, tired of her rambling, sets the phone down without hanging up. He discovers later that Tyler picked up the phone, followed the call to Marla's home, and brought her back to the house where they engaged in vigorous sex, much to the narrator's disgust. The next morning in the kitchen, Marla finds the narrator, who is astonished to see her in his house. The Narrator's astonishment insults her and she leaves in disgust. After she leaves, Tyler enters the kitchen and joyfully reveals that he and Marla had sex the night before. He also gravely makes the narrator promise that he'll never mention Tyler to Marla. That night the narrator joins Tyler while he steals human fat out of the dumpster of a liposuction clinic. Tyler says that the best fat for making the soap he sells comes from human beings. Back in their kitchen, Tyler shows the narrator how to render tallow from the fat. After explaining a bit about the history of soapmaking, Tyler plants a wet kiss on the back of the narrator's hand and dumps pure lye on the spot, causing a horrific chemical burn. Tyler refuses to let the narrator wash the lye off his hand, saying that water will worsen the burn, and tells the narrator that the burn is a rite of passage -- Tyler has burned his own hand in an identical way and that the horrific pain will make him feel alive. Tyler also forces the narrator to accept allegiance to him and then neutralizes the burn with vinegar. Later, when they meet with a cosmetics salesperson at a department store, the narrator remarks that Tyler's soap sells for a very high price. The original fight club continues to gather more members until Tyler shifts its focus: their initial members are invited to the house but must stand on the front porch for three days without food, water or encouragement, after which they'll be allowed inside. They must also endure insults from existing members and physical hazing. After they're allowed to join the new group they are required to shave their heads. Tyler dubs them "Space Monkeys". Tyler sets them all to refurbishing the house, performing cleaning chores and cultivating whatever they can in the small backyard garden. Earlier, Tyler had also spend a significant amount of time building bunk beds in the basement for new members. With the narrator, he holds a college dropout ( Joon Kim ) at gunpoint and threatens to kill him if he doesn't pursue his dream of becoming a veterinarian. He allows Lou ( Peter Iacangelo ), the owner of the bar where their fight club is held, to beat him horribly before coughing blood all over him and demanding to stay in the basement. Horrified, Lou agrees. Tyler gives the club members a "homework assignment": they will all pick a fight with a complete stranger and lose. The narrator says it's a much harder task than anyone would think. Bob accosts people in a downtown plaza; another member antagonizes a priest with a garden hose. After a period of days, Marla leaves and Tyler introduces the narrator to his newest hobby: using his proficient skills in soap-making, Tyler has turned the basement of the house into a laboratory where he uses soap and other ingredients to make explosives. Tyler and the narrator continue managing fight club, but this time, at a much different frequency. Receiving flack at work, the narrator finally confronts his boss ( Zach Grenier ) with knowledge about substandard practice and negotiates to work from home with increased pay to keep his mouth shut. When his boss objects and calls security, the narrator beats himself up severely so that, by the time security arrives, they are led to believe that the narrator's boss assaulted his employee. Tyler eventually assigns homework to his recruits and preaches to them about the detriments of consumerism and relying on society and authority figures. He proposes to revert back to the time where a man's worth depended on the sweat on his back and where he only used what he needed. This philosophy evolves into what Tyler calls 'Project Mayhem,' and the fighting in basements turns into mischievous acts of vandalism and destruction. Their actions do not go unnoticed, but Tyler manages to show the lead investigator, a police chief, that the very people he's hunting are those that they depend on; waiters, bus drivers, sewer engineers, and more. They threaten the police chief with castration and the investigation is called off. While Project Mayhem grows, the narrator begins to feel more and more distant from Tyler and jealousy sets in, making him go so far as to beat up and disfigure one recruit ( Jared Leto ) because he 'wanted to destroy something beautiful'. As they walk away from this fight club meeting, Tyler drives the narrator and two members in a large Lincoln Town Car. In the rain, Tyler taunts the narrator, suggesting that he hasn't even begun to live his life to his fullest potential. When he allows the car to drift into oncoming traffic and the narrator grabs the steering wheel, Tyler scolds the narrator for being weak and pathetic. Tyler then admits that he destroyed the narrator's apartment. The narrator finally gives in, Tyler lets the car drift and they slam head-on into another vehicle. They emerge from the wreck with Tyler exclaiming that the narrator has a new life based on his living through a near-death experience. When Tyler disappears for a while, the narrator is left at home with an ever increasing band of Mayhem members who watch television and laugh at their publicized acts of vandalism. When the narrator demands to know more about their mischief, Bob tells him "The 1st rule of Project Mayhem is you do not ask questions." Bob is later killed during a botched sabotage operation and the narrator seeks to disband the group before things get out of control. He tries to find Tyler and discovers a list of phone numbers he recently used. The narrator trails the list all over the country, discovering that fight clubs have sprouted everywhere. At one particular bar, the bartender addresses the narrator as 'Sir' which prompts the narrator to ask if he knows him. The bartender, after being assured that he's not being put through a test, tells the narrator that he is Tyler Durden. In shock, the narrator returns to his hotel room and calls up Marla, asking if they've ever had sex. Though irritated, Marla confirms their relationship and states that she knows him as "Tyler Durden." Marla hangs up and Tyler suddenly appears in the room and confronts the narrator, telling him he broke his promise to not speak about Tyler to Marla. A few minutes of conversation confirms that they are, indeed, one person. The narrator has insomnia; he can't sleep so, whenever he thinks he is (or at random parts of a day), Tyler's persona takes over. The narrator faints at the epiphany. When he wakes up, he finds another phone list beside him with calls from all over the country. He returns to his home to find it completely empty but one bulletin board yields a display of folders detailing certain buildings within the financial district. He finds that each one has been infiltrated by members of Project Mayhem and that Tyler is planning on destroying them, thereby erasing credit card company records and 'wiping the slate clean'. In a panic, the narrator grabs all the information and reports himself to the local police. However, after telling the inspector everything he knows and being left with two officers, the narrator discovers that the officers are Mayhem members and they tell him that they were instructed by him to 'take the balls' of anyone who interfered with Project Mayhem...even him. The narrator manages to escape by stealing one of the officers pistols and runs to one of the buildings set for demolition. He finds an unmarked van in the parking garage filled with nitroglycerin and attempts to disarm the bomb. Tyler appears and goads him but the narrator successfully disarms the bomb. He and Tyler engage in a fierce fight which appears oddly on the surveillance cameras since the narrator is only fighting himself. The Tyler personality wins and reactivates the bomb and the narrator 'brings himself' to another building where they can safely watch the destruction. Back at the opening scene the narrator, with the gun in his mouth, mumbles again and tells Tyler, "I still can't think of anything". Tyler smiles and says, "Ah, flashback humor". The narrator begs that Tyler abandon the project but Tyler is adamant. He professes that what he's doing is saving mankind from the oppression of consumerism and unnecessary luxuries and that there won't even have to be any casualties; the people who work in the buildings are all Mayhem members, completely aware of the plan. Near breaking point, the narrator comes to realize that whatever Tyler does, he can do. He sees Tyler with the gun in his hand and realizes that it's actually in his hand. He puts it up to his own chin and tells Tyler to listen to him. He says that his eyes are open and then puts the gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. The bullet shoots out of the side of his jaw and Tyler is 'killed' with a gaping wound to the back of his head. As the narrator recovers, members of Project Mayhem arrive with snacks and Marla in tow (Tyler had previously instructed her to be brought to them). Seeing 'Tyler's' wounds, the Mayhem members leave Marla alone with him to fetch some medical supplies. 'Tyler' stands with Marla and tells her that everything's going to be fine as the first detonation ignites the building in front of them. The others on the block soon follow suit and 'Tyler' takes Marla's hand in his and tells her "You met me at a very strange time in my life." They watch as the explosives go off and the buildings collapse.

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All 11 Fight Scenes In Road House 2024, Ranked

Hard-hitting fight scenes with expert precision make the new 'Road House' a thrilling watch for action lovers.
Elwood Dalton's ruthless tactics and tragic past add an edge to the chaotic violence in the remake.
Director Doug Liman makes the fight scenes leap out from the screen.

Just like the original movie starring Patrick Swayze, the new remake of Road House features plenty of brilliant fight scenes. The 1989 version of Road House is the ultimately guilty pleasure movie, packed with scenes of lowlife scum getting summarily beaten down by a stoic bouncer. The remake recaptures this crowd-pleasing feel, but it also features fight scenes which are laced with incredible tension. There are plenty of differences between the two movies, not least Dalton's UFC past in the 2024 version, but the remake is just as chaotically violent.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Elwood Dalton, a former UFC champion who retired after killing an opponent in the ring. Rather than cobbling together an unsatisfying life scaring underground MMA fighters out of their winnings, Dalton takes a job as a bouncer at a rowdy bar in the Florida Keys. Road House has been receiving positive reviews , and its hard-hitting fight scenes are a big reason why. Director Doug Liman previously worked on the action thrillers The Bourne Identity and Edge of Tomorrow , and he makes Road House 's fight scenes leap out from the screen.

Road House is available to stream now on Amazon Prime Video.

Road House Review: Doug Liman's Remake Is Bigger, Louder & Slightly Dumber Than The Original

Dalton breaking jack's fingers, dalton can incapacitate people with surgical precision.

Dalton often shows signs of his incredible understanding of human anatomy, presumably learned from years as a professional fighter. He knows exactly how to inflict the most damage with the absolute minimum effort, and this is how he turns the table on Jack when he pulls a gun on him. Jack thinks that waving a gun at Dalton will be enough to force him into his car, but Dalton doesn't break a sweat. He tells Jack very calmly that all he needs to do is break his index finger and his middle finger, and he follows through.

Dalton's Throat-Punch Kill

Dalton stops holding back after brandt's men burn down the book store.

One other instance of Dalton using his knowledge of the human body is when he kills Vince with a single punch to the throat. He explains that he's probably broken his hyoid bone and collapsed his trachea, but either result will stop him being able to breathe. It's an uncharacteristically cold-blooded moment from Dalton, and it suggests that mentally he could be back on the path to the dark place that saw him kill one of his opponents in the ring. This moment could be a tribute to the original Road House , in which Dalton rips out a man's throat.

Dell Being Killed By The Crocodile

Dell thinks he has the upper hand on dalton, but he ends up being eaten.

Dell doesn't take his initial loss to Dalton lightly. As soon as he's out of the hospital, he tries to run Dalton down in his car. When that doesn't work, he ambushes Dalton on his boat, aptly named "the Boat," with a shotgun in his hand. Just as Jack finds out, having a gun doesn't necessarily give you the advantage over Dalton in a fight. Dalton quickly disarms Dell and knocks him overboard. He tries to rescue him before a crocodile snaps him up, but he's too late. As everyone in Glass Key knows, "crocs hide their food."

Dalton & Ellie Fighting Brandt On His Boat

The waves level the playing field.

As Brandt tries to escape from his burning yacht, he takes a smaller speedboat with Ellie alongside as a hostage. Dalton commandeers Knox's boat and tracks him down, and he teams up with Ellie to fight Brandt as the boat is tossed around by the ocean. The waves add some extra jeopardy to the fight, but Brandt is no real fighter. If it was a regular fight on flat ground, Dalton probably could have killed him in seconds. He loses control of the boat before too long and gets catapulted into the bar, setting up Road House 's ending .

18 Best Jake Gyllenhaal Movies, Ranked

Billy breaking up a fight at the road house, dalton's apprentice learns how to take out the trash.

Rather than taking on every rowdy customer who comes to the bar, Dalton decides to train Billy and Reef as bouncers so that they can deal with the everyday troublemakers. They could hardly ask for a better teacher, as shown by how quickly their skills develop. Dalton is surprisingly hands-off in his approach. He tells Billy exactly what to do when a fight breaks out and one man has a concealed knife. Billy takes a big step back and pops him in the nose. Dalton can leave later knowing that the Road House is in safe hands.

Dalton's Career-Ending UFC Fight

Road house's ufc scenes use real-life fighters and pundits.

Director Doug Liman uses POV shots in Dalton's darkest moments, and his fight with Harris is the darkest of all.

Conor McGregor isn't the only UFC fighter in Road House . Jay Hieron plays Jax "Jetway" Harris, Dalton's opponent in his championship bout. Road House drip feeds the story of Dalton's fight throughout the movie. Eventually, it becomes clear why the event haunts Dalton's dreams. Dalton kills Harris in the ring by refusing to stop. Director Doug Liman uses POV shots in Dalton's darkest moments, and his fight with Harris is the darkest of all. The spectacle of the big occasion makes Dalton's trauma even worse. The cameras flash around him as he begins to understand what he has just done.

Post Malone's Bareknuckle Boxing Fight

The rapper is surprisingly convincing in his cameo.

Post Malone is one of the most surprising members of the Road House cast , along with Conor McGregor. He plays Carter, a bareknuckle fighter in the movie's first scene. Fittingly, the movie opens with a punch to the face, as Carter takes down a much larger opponent. The ring announcer claims that Carter has taken down six challengers in a row, but he backs down from fighting Dalton when he recognizes who he is. Road House starts with a bang , immediately signaling its intention to be just as action-packed as the 1989 original.

Knox Destroying The Bar With A Golf Club

Conor mcgregor's introduction shakes things up.

As soon as Conor McGregor is introduced as Knox, strutting boldly down the street in the nude, Road House kicks into another gear.

As soon as Conor McGregor is introduced as Knox, strutting boldly down the street in the nude, Road House kicks into another gear. He throws his weight around with Brandt's crew before strolling into the Road House like he owns it with a golf club in his hands. Knox brings a whirlwind of chaos with him, smashing glasses as he almost dances his way through the bar. He seems to enjoy violence and pain, and he picks fights with bystanders just to cause a nuisance. He even tears through the netting which protects the band.

Knox & Dalton's First Road House Fight

Dalton meets his match at last.

After Dalton decides that Knox's antics have gone too far, he steps in to confront him. Despite the chaos all around them as an all-out bar fight ensues, Knox and Dalton remain utterly focused on one another. Their fight is the first time that Dalton truly seems like he's in danger. Even being stabbed in the abdomen and hit by a train is less threatening than Knox tossing him behind the bar and slamming his fists through glass bottles as if they are made of tissue paper. Dalton walks away from the Road House, seemingly defeated.

Road House 2024 Soundtrack Guide: Every Song & When They Play

Dalton taking down dell's gang at the road house, dalton finally shows what he's capable of.

Dalton's legend precedes him everywhere he goes , and this builds him up to be a fearsome warrior before he ever even throws a punch. Carter quits his fight as soon as he sees Dalton in the ring, and Billy says he is a big fan as soon as he meets him. Dalton has a lot to live up to, and his first fight scene shows that he's worthy of the hype. He asks Dell if he has medical insurance first, and then he brutally dispatches him and his four friends. Dalton's bone-cracking, head-smashing skills are put on display for all to see, but he never breaks a sweat.

Dalton & Knox's Final Showdown

Road house's final fight is also its best.

Dalton and Knox's second fight is a beautifully choreographed mixture of MMA mastery and sheer power.

Road House saves the very best for last. Knox and Dalton's final fight is just as incredible as the first one, but Dalton no longer reins in his killer instincts. Their fight is a beautifully choreographed mixture of MMA mastery and sheer power. They tumble around the ruins of the bar, grappling on the floor for a while, before both tiring and going blow-for-blow with the power of two heavyweight boxers. When Dalton seems finished, he draws on something extra to fight back and brutally stabs Knox with two broken pieces of wood. Road House 's post-credits scene shows Knox alive, setting up a potential rematch for the pair.

All 11 Fight Scenes In Road House 2024, Ranked

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The Movie "Fight Club"

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The Movie “Fight Club” The worksheet consists of an information text. Based on this text, there are various exercises such as matching tasks, multiple-choice questions, open questions and true-false questions. You receive the material and solutions in PDF format for easy printing and in docx format for The worksheet consists of an information text. Based on this text, there are various exercises such as matching tasks, multiple-choice questions, open questions and true-false questions. You receive the material and solutions in PDF format for easy printing and in docx format for individual customization.

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Fight Club Movie Review and Analysis
Fight Club Movie Review & Film Summary (1999)
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Fight Club movie review & film summary (1999)
"Fight Club" is the most frankly and cheerfully fascist big-star movie since "Death Wish," a celebration of violence in which the heroes write themselves a license to drink, smoke, screw and beat one another up.Sometimes, for variety, they beat up themselves. It's macho porn -- the sex movie Hollywood has been moving toward for years, in which eroticism between the sexes is replaced by all-guy ...
Fight Club
A depressed man (Edward Norton) suffering from insomnia meets a strange soap salesman named Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and soon finds himself living in his squalid house after his perfect apartment ...
Fight Club review
T wenty-five years ago, the ultimate bro film came out; it is now rereleased for the anniversary. David Fincher's bone-splintering, soft-tissue-pulping Fight Club is the ultraviolent hipster ...
Fight Club (1999)
Fight Club is very well made, with elaborate production design, great editing and startling images. David Fincher's direction is brilliantly handled and the performances of Edward Norton and Brad Pitt are superb. Overall, just a great film, a mesmerising ride through the 1990s male psyche. 9/10 Bethany Cox.
'Fight Club' Review: Movie (1999)
October 15, 2019 6:40am. Photofest. On Oct. 15, 1999, 20th Century Fox unveiled David Fincher's adaptation of Fight Club in theaters, where it would eventually go on to gross $100 million ...
Fight Club Movie Review
Our review: Parents say ( 49 ): Kids say ( 160 ): Even without the whiplash revelation, the film is a wild ride. Among its many inside jokes and eccentricities, the filmmakers, in imitation of Tyler, stuck single-frame subliminal nude photos into the feature. Not-so-subliminal are incidents of extreme violence, as Fight Club members hold ...
Fight Club Review
11 Nov 1999. Running Time: 139 minutes. Certificate: 18. Original Title: Fight Club. Surfing a boiling wave of utterly predictable tabloid controversy, This Monstrous Movie (® Daily Mail) seems ...
Fight Club
Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 15, 2024. Dennis Harvey 48 Hills. Fight Club did indeed fly over the heads of audiences expecting straight macho action thrills, as opposed to a mind ...
Fight Club
Fight Club - Metacritic. 1999. R. Twentieth Century Fox. 2 h 19 m. Summary The film's narrator (Edward Norton) attends support groups of all kinds as a way to "experience" something within his unfeeling, commercial existence. On a business trip, he meets Tyler Durden (Bradd Pitt) who encourages them to form a fight club as a release for their ...
Fight Club Movie Review and Star Rating
Fight Club Stars Edward Norton and Brad Pitt and is Directed by David Fincher. Review: Released over two decades ago, David Fincher's Fight Club remains in popular culture the way few films ever do. A movie that often resonates with those feeling marginalized by society, Fight Club lives on for each generation to interpret in new ways. Fight ...
'Fight Club': Such a Very Long Way From Duvets to Danger
Norton, drawn into Tyler's spell, soon forsakes his tidy ways and moves into the abandoned wreck that is ground central for Tyler. Then Tyler teaches his new roommate to fight in a nearby parking lot. The tacitly homoerotic bouts between these two men become addictive (as does sex with Marla), and their fight group expands into a secret society ...
Fight Club
A movie review by James Berardinelli. With its kinetic style, visceral approach, compelling storyline, and powerful social message, Fight Club makes a commanding case to be considered the '90s version of A Clockwork Orange. In a time when so few motion pictures leave an impact, Fight Club refuses to be ignored or dismissed.
Fight Club
Fight Club. By Peter Travers. October 16, 1999. Guaranteed: Fight Club will blow your skirt up. It's not just the rush of seeing Edward Norton, Brad Pitt and director David Fincher hit career ...
Fight Club (1999)
Fight Club: Directed by David Fincher. With Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Meat Loaf, Zach Grenier. An insomniac office worker and a devil-may-care soap maker form an underground fight club that evolves into much more.
Fight Club
Fight Club is a 1999 American film directed by David Fincher, and starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter.It is based on the 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk.Norton plays the unnamed narrator, who is discontented with his white-collar job. He forms a "fight club" with soap salesman Tyler Durden (Pitt), and becomes embroiled in a relationship with an impoverished but beguilingly ...
Fight Club at 20: the prescience and power of David Fincher's drama
W hen David Fincher's Fight Club was released 20 years ago, it was a crystal ball that was mistaken for a cultural crisis, much like Do the Right Thing had been a decade earlier and perhaps ...
Fight Club
For nearly two and a half hours, Fight Club pummels audiences with brutal violence. There's explicit, callous sexuality. Nudity. Alcohol. Obscene language (over 60 f-words). But the greatest threat to young viewers may be its portrayal of self-inflicted pain as a worthy high. Teen idol Pitt fights, blows things up, brands a man with acid and ...
What You're Getting Wrong About David Fincher's 'Fight Club'
The reason Fight Club is so easy to misunderstand is that David Fincher's movie beautifully sets up both the narrator's depression and Tyler's appeal. The narrator is a victim of capitalism ...
Parent reviews for Fight Club
BlitzGuy20 Parent of 9-year-old. March 3, 2022. age 14+. Fight Club is an extraordinary, beatific film about consumerism, violence, greed, mental health, sex and material obsession, this on it's own makes the movie incomprehensible for younger audiences, despite the film having some scenes of savagely brutal violence, language and sex.
FILM REVIEW; Such a Very Long Way From Duvets to Danger
In an expertly shot and edited film spiked with clever computer-generated surprises, Mr. Fincher also benefits, of course, from marquee appeal. The teamwork of Mr. Norton and Mr. Pitt is as ...
FIGHT CLUB
Bizarre, kinetic, fast-paced, and full of camera tricks and deeply disturbed material, FIGHT CLUB is perhaps the next cult movie to entice would-be vigilantes to repeated viewing experiences. Brad Pitt and Edward Norton start a fight club which turns into a vigilante group. Filled with violence, depicted fornication and nudity, its anarchistic ...
"Fight Club" movie review: [Essay Example], 1041 words
Movie Review Essay Example. When the movie "Fight Club" directed by David Fincher released on the 1st of January 1999 it opened to a somewhat disappointing business there was a widespread misjudgement that Fight Club was an action movie about underground bare-knuckle boxing contests Where in actuality, it's a horror/thriller movie which ...
Fight Club (1999)
An insomniac office worker and a devil-may-care soap maker form an underground fight club that evolves into much more. A nameless first person narrator ( Edward Norton) attends support groups in attempt to subdue his emotional state and relieve his insomniac state. When he meets Marla ( Helena Bonham Carter ), another fake attendee of support ...
All 11 Fight Scenes In Road House 2024, Ranked
Hard-hitting fight scenes with expert precision make the new 'Road House' a thrilling watch for action lovers. Elwood Dalton's ruthless tactics and tragic past add an edge to the chaotic violence ...
The Movie "Fight Club"
The Movie "Fight Club" The worksheet consists of an information text. Based on this text, there are various exercises such as matching tasks, multiple-choice questio. ... Our customer service team will review your report and will be in touch. £3.00 (no rating) 0 reviews. BUY NOW. Save for later. £3.00 (no rating) 0 reviews. BUY NOW. Save ...

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