Killing innocent people is not everybody's idea of a hobby, but for Patrick Bateman, protagonist of American Psycho, murder is the only relief from the world he lives in.
This is the world of the 1980s, the decade of greed. In Mary Harron's new film-based on Bret Easton Ellis' 1991 novel-Patrick appears to be a successful stockbroker, although we never see him doing any work: He spends his office days bossing around his secretary, listening to music, looking at porn magazines or watching TV.
As social activities, the loathsome Patrick, who apparently comes from a rich family, seems to pursue the regular hobbies of a Wall Street broker. He goes to clubs, hobnobs with his equally repugnant buddies, picks up girls (to supplement his "official" girlfriend/fiancée and his regular lover, a buddy's girlfriend), obsesses about clothes and business cards, tones his body and does drugs.
In American Psycho, "seems" is the key word: Nobody is who they seem, to the extent that people constantly call each other by wrong names and then slip into those roles.
So far, so good. If this were all there was to American Psycho, we'd have a critical, but fairly standard portrayal of high society in the 1980s: inane, superficial, hypocritical. But then there is Patrick's hobby, killing people.
The first time he kills, we're only mildly disturbed-he's had a bad day, gets pissed off at a homeless guy and stabs him to death. But after that, the murders get increasingly shocking, involving much more premeditation, sex, people who are supposedly Patrick's friends and ever more elaborate weaponry.
The point of all this, in the novel, was to satirize the '80s. Ellis' book contrasted endlessly long lists of completely unimportant items such as clothing and boring analyses of 1980s pop music with completely unmotivated and senseless violence. It showed the absurd consequences to which the ideology of that decade could have led, if fully realized.
So the film faces a dilemma: First of all, the 1980s are long over; second, the long lists won't work on screen; third, you can't show violence in a movie the way you can describe it in a book. (Mind you, the book was almost not published because of its violence, but in the end it was. The only rating problems the film had, typically enough, were for a threesome sex scene with a few thrusts too many).
All the same, Harron does an excellent job adressing some of these problems. For one thing, her casting of Christian Bale as Patrick is perfect-Bale's almost completely unemotional performance (except for the occasional sweat or blood on his face) provides the kind of backdrop to which his violent outbursts are all the more horrific. Smaller roles such as Patrick's fiancée (Reese Witherspoon), one of his stockbroker victims (Jared Leto) and a detective investigating that victim's disappearance (William Dafoe) also bring out great performances. The locales-Patrick's apartment, his office, bars and restaurants-are so stylized that they hardly seem real. In addition, Patrick gets to present his views on 1980s music to completely unimpressed individuals shortly before he kills them.
The only problem with American Psycho is that being a film, it relies too much on a plot that was less apparent in the book. The movie concentrates on one particular murder and its consequences, giving it a kind of coherence. Patrick gets increasingly violent and almost gets caught; his rampages seem caused by specific events. The narrative seems somewhat inappropriate to the book, in which the protagonist blends into society completely and has no motivation at all for what he does except the fact that he can get away it. In the end, the film comes to the same chilling conclusion, but it no longer has the satirical edge of Ellis' book-maybe because the 1980s are just too far in the past.
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