AMERICAN PSYCHO (2000)

 

(Director/co-screenwriter: Mary Harron. Co-screenwriter: Guinevere Turner.)

Storyline

A Wall Street executive lives two lives: one as a Wall Street executive, the other as wildly lucky serial killer. When both worlds begin to bleed into each other, his insanity spins out of control.

 

Review

Brett Easton Ellis’s controversial and experimentally structured 1991 novel inspired this different-than-the-book film, directed by Mary Harron, who co-wrote its screenplay with actress/writer Guinevere Turner. (Turner also plays Elizabeth, one of Patrick Bateman’s victims, whose grisly, post-threesome fate is briefly glimpsed.) 

AMERICAN is an often-hilarious, pitch-black satire-horror flick, set in New York in the 1980s. The film follows Bateman as he struggles (and fails to) balance his psychotic, sexual needs─humiliating, physically torturing and killing women─with his sparkling-clean, OCD-addled Wall Street lifestyle, two modes whose underlying cruelties are hand to glove: Bateman’s Wall Street associates (superbly played by Justin Theroux, Jared Leto, Matt Ross and Josh Lucas) may not physically torture and kill people, but their misogynistic and wealth-enhanced disregard and cruelty helps underscore the acceptability of Bateman’s notions that his victims─usually impoverished, female or both─are less than human.

The cinematography, art and set direction visually reflects that cold, on-the-surface dichotomy. Bateman lives in uptown, architecturally beautiful, and OCD-clean places, which─as Bateman’s sanity further disintegrates─he befouls with his victims’ blood, limbs and viscera, sometimes publicly. The fact that he often does his heinous, hysterical deeds in almost-full-view of everyone and tells them about it (only have them laugh him off or be disgusted by his bad manners) is chilling and still timely, perhaps more so given the events of these last few years.

John Cale’s music enhances the feel of the scenes. It works, like everything in AMERICAN. The acting, across the board, is excellent, especially: Christian Bale (who plays Bateman, effectively conveying the psycho’s rage, incredulousness and desperation); Chloë Sevigny (as Jean, Bateman’s secretary who’s openly crushing on her strangely tender employer); Samantha Mathis (as Bateman’s pill-zonked, sad-sack mistress, Courtney Rawlinson); Willem Dafoe (as Det. Donald Kimball, who knows something’s off about Bateman, but can’t quite finger it); Reese Witherspoon (as Evelyn Williams, Bateman’s wedding- and status-obsessed fiancée); and Cara Seymour (as Christie, a streetwalker who’s terrified of Bateman, but needs his money more).

AMERICAN, as a disturbing but relatively restrained horror flick-satire, hits every mark (without being gratuitous about it), making this one of the most potent, if sometimes gory and holy-frak-that’s-dark satires in the last twenty years.