American Psycho (2000)

Directed by Mary Harron. Starring Christian Bale, Chloë Sevigny, Willem Dafoe, Josh Lucas, Justin Theorux, Matt Ross, Reese Witherspoon, Samantha Mathis, Bill Sage, Cara Seymour, Jared Leto, Guinevere Turner. [R]

Investment banker Patrick Bateman (Bale) is a wealthy and narcissistic 1980s NYC yuppie with a circle of equally vapid and shallow “friends”…and is also a deeply disturbed serial killer whose superficial insecurities can set him off at any moment. Jet black postmodern satire of materialism, greed, misogyny, and social mores hammers home its points early and often, but doesn’t have anywhere to go in the second half, the fugitive strand of a potentially fascinating association between him and his tentative, compliant secretary (Sevigny) getting casually dismissed by the film’s ambiguous resolution. Well-cast Bale is as unsettling as he is hysterical in his breakthrough adult performance. Controversial, to be sure, just like the source novel by Bret Easton Ellis, and has similarly developed a cult following; its shortcomings are offset by flashes of subversive wit (e.g., the fetishization of business cards) and the appropriate objectification of the camera’s gaze. Saucy song cues may change the way you think about “Hip to Be Square,” among others. Screenplay adaptation by director Harron and co-star Turner. An in-name-only sequel followed a couple years later.

67/100