Sick of his typical day-to-day job narrator Edward Norton takes it upon himself to escape the tedium of society. He starts attending “help group” meetings, to try and make himself feel better.
Whilst on a plane trip, hoping it will crash and end everything, he meet’s a young rebel named Tyler Durdan. Tyler is everything he is not. He smokes, swears, and has no rules or morals. He is a cool, is somewhat mental, guy.
They become good friends and eventually start their own club for anyone.
The FIGHT CLUB.
Where people from different backgrounds, people of all ages and sizes could come and beat each other senseless – For fun!
Soon the ‘club’ is booming and, in Nortan’s view, spiraling out of control.
To make things worse, Tyler recruits members to take part in ‘Operation Mayhem’, a group of people against society and anything that they consider ‘Corporate’.
There are many questions Nortan wants answered but, as suddenly as he has entered Nortans life, he has disappeared
Will Nortan tell Tyler he thinks everything they are doing is wrong?
Will he find Tyler and stop ‘Operation Mayhem’?
Will he find Tyler full stop?
The best scene in the movie comes when Nortan decides to quit his moribund lifestyle and job to start funding ‘Fight club’.
Nortan strolls into his evil, vindictive boss’s office with the words: “We need to talk.” The soulless car manufacturer obliges with the man’s proposal.
He wants his employers to continue to pay him all his wages and bonuses or else he will blow the whistle on the recent car fatalities, that were all considered dodgy.
When his boss refuses his plan, Nortan simply clenches his fist and is reduced to plan B – Punch himself in the face.
After going, first, through a glass table and then down a set of glass shelves, his boss starts to worry about his mental health and immediately calls for security. Nortan crawls across the floor, soaked in blood and starts begging, at the feet, of his boss.
“Give me the pay cheques like I asked and you wont ever see me again” he splutters just as security run in to see the battered man begging on his knee’s in-front of his boss. He gets what he wants.
Fincher is the master of dark gloomy, always dripping, surroundings and takes you head first into the action.
His ability to draw you into a sinister, darkly sickening, underworld and rush you out, still screaming for more, show’s how talented and brave a director he is.
Career best performances from both stars. See if you don’t start an argument or debate by saying Nortan is better than Pitt.
Pitt plays Tyler with surprising ease, and obviously had a hand in how the character came across.
Does Fight Club glamorize violence?
Well if you thought ‘Kids’ was shocking and promoted teenage sex, or ‘Trainspotting’ showed heroin addiction as a cool thing, then this film probably will offend.
Fast paced and blurry with delicious black comedy thrown in, as suttle as a punch from a drunken brawl.
This movie is the best of 1999, if not the decade.
Utterly wonderful and what an ending!