Fight Club movie review - Aussieboyreviews
DOES FIGHT CLUB INVOLVE AS MUCH FIGHTING AS THE TITLE SUGGESTS?
This excellently-crafted cult classic with exceptional performances and flawless direction isn’t actually so much about a fight club, it’s about class conflict. The film is unpredictable, twisty, violent, mature, bizarre and often insane.
Storyline
An insomniac office worker who hates his job and a strange soap salesman begin an underground fight club together that ends up evolving into much more.
Movie Images
Movie details
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter, Jared Leto, Meat Loaf, Zach Grenier
Writer: Jim Uhls
Release Date (Australia): 11 November 1999
Runtime: 139 minutes/2h 19m
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Language: English
CONTENT GUIDE (warning: May contain spoilers)
The film contains themes of mental illness, dissociative identity disorder and destruction.
Men are depicted having several fist-fights and punching each other in the face, accompanied by graphic and sometimes close-up depictions of blood and injury detail. There is also a scene in which a man puts a gun in his mouth and shoots himself, as well as bloody depictions of gunshot wounds.
The film contains use of the words “f**k”, “s**t”, “ass”, “bitch” and “damn”.
A woman threatens suicide by overdosing on Xanax.
The film contains male buttocks nudity and animated female breasts nudity, as well as brief sexualised images of a man’s erect penis.
The film contains brief and occasionally animated depictions of sex scenes, as well as sexualised imagery, depictions of sex toys and strong sexual references in which a couple can be heard moaning in a bedroom as they implicitly have sex.
mpaa rating
R (for disturbing and graphic depiction of violent anti-social behavior, sexuality and language)
Aussie boy's thoughts
David Fincher’s Fight Club is said to focus heavily on toxic masculinity, male violence and a constant fighting, when the reality is that the film’s themes actually centre on class conflict and consumerism. It’s just extremely difficult for everyone to not break the first rule of fight club, in which you cannot talk about fight club, but it’s an exceptional movie worth the discussion, and even worth watching more than once.
Fight Club stars Edward Norton as a man with insomnia who meets another man named Tyler Durden played by Brad Pitt, and the two eventually form the underground fight club. As the title definitely suggests, this film involves brutal fight sequences in which men are bloodily pummelled, and the intention of the fight club is meant to be a way for these men to vent their emotions in a physical way. But for a film titled Fight Club, it’s surprisingly not mainly focused on the fight club, which in fact only probably takes up around 15-20% of the movie.
Before heading forward to talk about the themes that rule the film, Pitt, Norton, and remarkably, even supporting actress Helena Bonham Carter, are naturally brilliant. Every scene focusing on these characters, thanks to their excellent performances, feels very real and as if it wasn’t faked. Director Fincher’s work in this movie is also entirely flawless, with every shot presenting perfect cinematography that’s edited extremely well, especially at the closing shot. Even the use of the song Where is my Mind? by the Pixies at the end of the film and the fast rock-music during the opening credits makes it incredibly more memorable and well-themed.
Looking at the themes, this movie isn’t so much about fighting, violence and masculinity as you’d expect it to be about, without glorifying the violence. Fight Club’s subject matter ranges from class conflict, society and consumerism, with the group of fighting men making it a full-on cult movie. It’s a very unpredictable and perfectly executed movie as well, with each twist being shocking and unpredictable if you haven’t heard the spoilers on it by today. This movie will at times feel quite slow for some people, but it’s always enthralling, entertaining, and often with hilarious dark jokes throughout. Watch it twice, and break the first two rules!
Thank you for reading this page and for more Aussie Boy reviews, visit Aussieboyreviews.com.