American Psycho

2000

Director: Mary Harron

Writers: Bret Easton Ellis, Mary Harron

Stars: Christian Bale, Justin Theroux, Josh Lucas, Jared Leto, Reese Witherspoon, Willem Dafoe.

IMDb rating: **********

My rating: *****

IMDb storyline:

A wealthy New York investment banking executive hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he escalates deeper into his illogical, gratuitous fantasies.

Patrick Bateman, portrayed brilliantly and flawlessly by the amazing Christian Bale, kills (mostly) for no reason, sometimes there is a motive, but usually over petty things such as watermarks and reservations. Nothing is enough for this man. He has it all, money, sex, social standing, good suits, good looks, but there is always something in him that wants more, or wants what other people have, what he can’t have. He eliminates his competition simply by killing them with insatiable blood-lust and complete lack of empathy. This movie is truly all about him, his whole life is about him, vanity, it seems, is everything. His life is a string of extravagant meals out in the best restaurants in town, and miscellaneous acts of violence and mutilation.

Despite his great wealth he is emotionally bankrupt, and although we can clearly see h is very wealthy, we never see him do any work. We see him in his place of work, and frequently socialising with his work colleagues, but no work is done.

Christopher Lehmann-Houpt said this about the film in the New York Times:

“Patrick Bateman lives in a morally flat world in which clothes have more value than skin, objects are worth more than bones, and the human soul is something to be sought with knives, hatchets and drills.”

The closing scene of the film is very cryptic and has left a lot of people wondering if he did in fact kill people or if it was all in his head. In the final scene Bateman is in some sort of public house, he walks up to his lawyer and confronts him about he message he left on his answer machine, confessing his brutal murders killing “Twenty, maybe forty people”. To this his lawyer laughs telling him what a good joke it was, mistaking him for another client (the second time Bateman has been mistaken for someone else), Bateman then tells him in all seriousness that he did kill all those people including Allen, his lawyer again says that he saw Allen in London and had dinner with him and that it was impossible for him to kill these people. So Bateman sits down with his friends and starts to have a laugh with them, literally getting away with murder and the film ends.

Also, in the penultimate scene Bateman goes back to Allens apartment, where he stored many of the bodies of the people he killed. When he gets there the door is open and the apartment is being sold, he goes to the cupboard where he hung up the bodies and they have disappeared, the realtor then tells him to leave the apartment, seeming to know who he is.

So could this all be a figment of his imagination, could his disillusioned brain have made him think he killed all those people? What if Allen really did go to London? In the books it is made perfectly clear that he did in fact kill all these people, but the film it is left open to interpretation. Whichever is true, firmly instills in us that Bateman is crazy, he belongs in a loony bin. Either his mind is telling him that he’s killed people, or he has actually killed people, for no apparent reason. Throughout the film he remains stone cold, for in the end he doesn’t feel guilt, or remorse, just sorry that he was caught.

The character of detective Donald Kimball (William Dafoe) also plays a role in this controversial ending, in one scene he goes from openly accusing Bateman of murder to apparently not knowing a thing and fully believing Batemans story, while also giving him a solid alibi. Apparently Harron asked Dafoe to portray his character in three ways, 1. Kimball knew Bateman killed Allen, 2. Kimball didn’t know if Bateman killed Allen, and 3. Kimball wasn’t sure if Bateman killed Allen. Harron then edited the takes together giving the audience an unsure vibe of what the detective thought of Bateman.

This film is the life of one man taken to a disturbed, brutal and demented extreme with the most cruel, iconic and unforgettable characters who can have everything they ever desire. It is a brilliant juxtapose of the perfect American Dream, and its worst nightmare.