American Psycho (Uncut Killer Collector's Edition)
by Mary Harron
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Actor: Bill Sage, Chloë Sevigny, Christian Bale, Josh Lucas, Justin TherouxDirector: Mary Harron
Brand: LIONS GATE HOME ENT.
Writer: Guinevere Turner
Writer: Mary Harron
Producer: Alessandro Camon
Producer: Chris Hanley
Producer: Christian Halsey Solomon
Producer: Clifford Streit
Writer: Bret Easton Ellis
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); Spanish (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Collector's Edition, Color, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Surround Sound, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-06-21
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Lions Gate
DVD Reviews of American Psycho (Uncut Killer Collector's Edition)
DVD Review: Unconventional but funny
Summary: 4 Stars
I wasn't sure what to think the first time I saw this movie, having not then read the book it's based (albeit somewhat loosely) on. I actually found myself grinning and even laughing aloud while watching this movie, which made me feel sort of guilty...was I supposed to laugh when people were getting butchered gruesomely right and left? Was it really a vicious slasher flick? An 80s nostalgia flick? Or was it a social satire?
Actually, it is a bit of all three, though primarily it is a very well-done bit of social satire, commenting on the excesses of the late 1980s by examining one man, Patrick Bateman, played with total yuppie abandon by the remarkable Christian Bale. Bateman is a Wall Street high-flyer, completely lacking in importance but rich enough to give the appearance of it. He is a consummate performer, an empty shell of a man clad in expensive Valentino suits and cared for with the finest products pour l'homme. He blithely admits that he lacks any sort of human emotion except greed and ambition, and this becomes fairly obvious almost immediately; his face is usually fixed in an empty perma-grin, and his voice is rather high-pitched, with that hollow sort of forced cheerfulness that self-help gurus and promoters on late-night infomercials have.
This is entirely suitable for Bateman; he is the consummate consumer, far more interested in spending time with his daily personal care routine than in developing any real human relationships. He describes this skin-care and exercise regimen in a lengthy monologue, in fact, near the opening of the film. It is one of the film's most entertaining moments: its unabashed, preening vanity is hysterical, and the sequence is not hurt any by frequent displays of Bale's extremely well-cut physique. Bale uses his physicality as part of his roles, and always has: here he has the well-defined, bulked-up body of a Greek god and clearly spends most of his free time exercising to the point of obsession. This enhances the image of Bateman as a total narcissist, and plays along very well with the 80s obsession with exercise and weight.
When he is not discussing himself, Bateman talks mainly about music and pop culture. He delivers paeans to the corporate gods of the music industry: Phil Collins, Whitney Houston, Huey Lewis and the News, MOR - anyone whose work justifies the solipsistic lifestyle he leads - but what he says is often so self-contradictory we wonder if he's actually thought about any of it, or learned it wholesale from the album covers and magazines. His monologuing is usually amusing, but we learn fairly quickly that it is not a good sign; people have a tendency to die when Bateman starts talking about music. In fact, people have a tendency to die when they're around Bateman in general, and this only increases in frequency as the movie progresses.
There are many murders in this film, but the viewer is gratefully spared seeing any of them in any sort of detail. The book goes into grisly, delighted in an almost Julia Child-ish way, detail about the killings; here director Mary Harron has the good sense to keep much of the gore off-screen. It was not, in fact, for violence and gore that the film originally got an NC-17 rating, but for a rather risqué three-way sex scene. Five or six seconds cut from the theatrical release (but restored on this "uncut" DVD along with eight other scenes, of varying quality and importance) got it an R-rating instead, but honestly, unless you really pay attention you'll never notice the added footage, and it's no more graphic than what was left in.
The film definitely deserves its R-rating, but the violence and the sex are done in such a way that they are not mean or vicious towards the victims, only towards Bateman, who is never made to look anything but a total idiot. These scenes are really more humourous than revolting, though that sounds callous to those who haven't seen the film. Bateman is such a priss, such a total narcissist, that it is impossible to admire or sympathize with him. We cannot believe that the murders are going on anywhere except inside his head; we suspect he's too air-headed to really be capable of killing. Harron does not explicitly say this is the case, but it is more than implied: trails of blood vanish miraculously, chainsaws are aimed impossibly well, people who are supposed to have been murdered turn up mysteriously at restaurants, apartments full of corpses become miraculously empty. Bateman has a way of occupying empty space that makes him completely unmemorable even to his own lawyer, and the end of the film is the strongest argument for everything having gone on in his own twisted mind.
Christian Bale is a complete marvel in this role. I have been a fan since his heart-wrenching performance ages ago in "Empire of the Sun," though here he has clearly grown up and could not be more different. It speaks well for his versatility that he could go from the youthfully innocent Demetrius in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" the year before, to the utterly indifferent Patrick Bateman here, to the stoic and thoroughly decent Mandras in "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" the year after. This may be because Bale seems to lack any shred of self-preservation, completely giving himself over to his characters.
Here, he completely inhabits Bateman whilst simultaneously making him a 24-hour performer himself. There is nothing to Patrick Bateman: he is all posture and gesture, "sound and fury signifying nothing," and Bale nails this in a dead-on performance that is far more nuanced than is often acknowledged. This is a role that could easily make an actor look ridiculous, even repulsive, yet Bale manages by throwing caution to wind to make him, if not believable, acceptable in his own peculiar fashion. It takes a very distinct courage to run down a corridor, blood-spattered and wearing nothing but tennis-shoes, bearing a mirror-polished gleaming chainsaw and screaming at the top of one's lungs. Bale has it, and manages to be so ludicrous and off-the-wall in this scene that I had time to notice that he wasn't wearing socks in his shoes, and could be more offended by this than the thought of the chainsaw. This sort of response is essential to the proper understanding and enjoyment of this movie.
The film is strongest as a commentary and exposition of the 1980s yuppie quest for world domination, though some may complain Harron is a one-note director and hammers her point home a little too well. The 80s were a decade of total narcissism, when it was "hip to be square," greed was good, and one's social importance was determined largely by what restaurants one could get into on a Friday night. (This is, in fact, the inspiration for one of Bateman's murderous rages.) By carrying these themes into the exaggerated, hyper-macho world of corporate takeovers, Harron is able to more fully explore them. Here, Bateman's murders become the logical if radical extensions of Wall Street's corporate aggressiveness, and "mergers and acquisitions" are not so far removed from "murders and executions," and his utter indifference to anyone but himself is the reasonable end of the dehumanizing of the corporate machine.
Description of American Psycho (Uncut Killer Collector's Edition)
Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) is a Wall Street yuppie obsessed with success, status and style, with a stunning fiancé (Reese Witherspoon). He is also a psychotic killer who rapes, murders and dismembers both strangers and acquaintances without provocation or purpose. Based on the controversial novel by Bret Easton Ellis, the film offers a sharp satire to the dark side of yuppie culture in the ?80s, while setting forth a vision that is both terrifying and chilling.Bestsellers in DVD
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