Amazon.com Essentials:
The Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho, a dark, violent
satire of the "me" culture of Ronald Reagan's 1980s, is certainly one of
the
most controversial books of the '90s, and that notoriety fueled its
bestseller status. This smart, savvy adaptation
by Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol) may be able to ride the crest of
the notoriety; prior to the film's release, Harron fought a
ratings battle (ironically, for depictions of sex rather than violence),
but at the time the director stated, "We're rescuing [the book] from its
own
bad reputation." Harron and co-screenwriter Guinevere Turner (Go
Fish) overcome many of the objections of Ellis's novel by keeping the most
extreme violence offscreen (sometimes just barely), suggesting the
reign of terror of yuppie killer Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) with
splashes of blood and
personal souvenirs. Bale is razor sharp as the blank corporate
drone, a preening tiger in designer suits whose speaking voice is part
salesman, part self-help guru, and completely artificial. Carrying himself
with the poised confidence of a male model, he spends his days in a numbing
world of status-symbol one-upmanship and soul-sapping small talk, but
breaks
out at night with smirking explosions of homicide, accomplished with the
fastidious care of a hopeless obsessive. The film's approach to this mayhem
is simultaneously shocking and discreet; even Bateman's outrageous
naked charge with a chainsaw is most notable for the impossibly polished
and
gleaming instrument of death. Harron's film is a hilarious, cheerfully
insidious hall of mirrors all pointed inward, slowly cracking as the
portrait becomes increasingly grotesque and insane. --Sean Axmaker
