#70 - American Psycho (2000)

I'm going to be honest: I'm running out of films and the sole reason why I'm watching American Psycho is because of that meme with Christian Bale holding an axe while smiling and covered in blood. What can I say, one of the reasons why I started the list was to understand it when people reference the movies. So yeah, if that's why I wanted to watch it, you can say American Psycho is not a particularly interesting movie. I enjoyed it nonetheless.

American Psycho introduces Partick Bateman, a metrosexual, sucessful yuppie that happens to be a serial killer. Whenever something annoys him, he goes out and kills people, or the object of his annoyance. As you might expect, the film sometimes doesn't take itself seriously. Some parts are actually funny because of this. The iconic part where he kills a friend of his with a big smile on his face, or when another guy mistakes his murder attempt for a sexual advance and comes out to him. But the overall tone is dramatic with bits of comedy.

  

Never has the word "douche" been so perfectly described with a picture.

 The film's main theme is the underlying viciousness in modern life. Well, businessmen's life to be more precise. Patrick simply takes all the agressiveness these men usually save for doing business, and turns it into actual physical violence. For instance, when Patrick's workmates flash their business cards, they act like they were hunting trophies or something. "I've got the best card" is something like "I have the biggest dick". The idea is really interesting and properly executed.

Christian Bale's performance is pretty solid. Bateman is incredibly vain, egotistical and greedy, and all that fuels his murderous rage, killing everyone he comes across when he's particularly annoyed. And Bale plays the character very well, both when he is applying excessive makeup as a metrosexual yuppie jerk, and when he's viciously killing a coworker with an axe while listening to Huey Lewis and the New's "Hip to Be Square".

  

"Killer" music, man (I'm so funny).

Now, as the film goes on it gets pretty weird. Eventually Patrick realizes that some of the murders did not happen, and were indeed just a fantasy (I doubt you can aim a chainsaw at the end of a staircase and hit your target). It helps to solidify the film's main idea of frustrated frenzy but I didn't think it was a satisfying conclusion.

American Psycho is a pretty good film. in the end. But it doesn't really stand out a lot. It's enjoyable, but not particularly funny or memorable. Hm, I've been saying the same thing for the last three-something films. I hope it doesn't become a trend.