(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.
