American Psycho (2000)

Short: In late 1980s New York, Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) is a VP of mergers and acquisitions at Pierce and Pierce. At night, however, he’s a murderer with an insatiable bloodlust. After the disappearance of a co-worker, Paul Allen (Jared Leto), Bateman becomes the subject of Detective Kimball’s (Willem Dafoe) investigation, but that only seems to encourage Patrick.

Oddly enough, although there’s a complete story there, I couldn’t really think of anything to write beyond the first two sentences. That’s what it’s about: An affluent, handsome young man in 1987. He’s wealthy and well dressed, goes to the best restaurants, and does the best coke in their bathrooms. And then he kills a lot of people.

Perhaps when Bret Easton Ellis released the novel it was easy to brush off as a gory horror story. Director and co-writer Mary Harron and co-writer Guinevere Turner wanted to prevent the story from slipping into oblivion, so they gave us this master work.

Harron and Turner focus not on the murders themselves but on their protagonist’s reaction to it. They also brought back Bale out of oblivion, so he could dive into the role with maniacal glee. Bateman is deadpan in every situation, hiding away his inner pain and disgust with the language and actions of the other VPs he spends his time with, but he is in fits of joy when he sociopathically defiles all the other beautiful bodies of his generation.

To that end, and without having read the novel, Ellis kind of reminds me of Hemingway. Oh, my, that’s just plain nutty. Okay, let me explain a little, even though the comparison is shaky at best: All of Hemingway’s work, in his own estimation and mine, was him trying to sort out his feelings after the war. Everything he wrote was, on one level or another, about the war. The 20s, as fun as they seem in retrospect, were as bad as and sometimes worse than the war itself because they served to etherize people into forgetting about the war, forgetting to grieve for it. I’ve got it into my head that the materialism of the 80s was like that, creating a façade to hide the emptiness inside.

Bateman’s life is an exaggeration of those feelings, which is what makes it such a rich satire. Oh, satire. I heart you.

John Cale provides an excellent score, which was at turns jovial and menacing, much like the main character himself.

Unfortunately for me, I already knew quite a bit about this movie before I saw it, including the ending. So, either for that reason or because I am one sick puppy, I found a lot of it amusing. Also, either because I knew what was going on or because I’m sharp like a tack, I picked up on a lot of clues that give the ending away.

The movie’s engrossing, delightful, and intelligent, but it’s not quite perfect. No particular reason, no one in particular to blame, but it’s just not quite there. I therefore choose to blame supporting actor Josh Lucas, for (a) taking Cole Hauser’s place and doing a poor job of it (I am convinced that Hauser would have been on to Bateman and kicked his ass), and (b) for reminding me of Ben Affleck in that scene in Good Will Hunting, where he shows up in an ill fitting suit, squirms in his chair, and eventually demands cash.

But, oh, that business card scene. That perfect, perfect scene. A