Fight Club is a really confusing movie, to say the least. Written and directed by David Fincher (Alien 3, Panic! At the Disco, and most recently Zodiacs), Fight Club stars Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman as two detectives trying to undercover the mysterious secret behind “the game”, a supposed underground boxing ring started by a guy named Tyler Durden.
Brad Pitt plays the title role as “Tyler Durden” who also narrates the film, as our protagonist shares the same name with the leader of “Project Mayhem” which is the whole “game” thing that this club of fighting centers around. The soundtrack was done by The Pixies as the song “Where is My Mind” is in every fucking scene in the movie and gets really distracting.
Anyway, Durden and Morgan Freeman (playing against type in this film as a “wise African American) go on the hunt for Kirk Douglas, currently knee-deep in the “game” that they keep talking about (although they never really explain what the hell the game is in the first place). We first meet
At this point in the film, we start to see some very obvious cracks in the character of Jack Torrence, leading up to the brilliant reveal of the novel he’s been writing during most of the movie. Shelley Duvall’s reaction is acting genius.
Confusing plot aside, Fincher’s directing is fairly sharp. I don’t know why he chose to film the entire movie through a green piece of plastic, but it works for the most part and highlights the other shades of green brought out in the stunning art direction provided by famed painter Pablo Picasso.
The major turning point in the movie comes when we discover that Morgan Freeman is actually the same person as Michael Douglas, who is also the same person as Edward Norton (who does not appear in this film), and the brilliant cameo by Meat Loaf really change the tone of the film from “romantic comedy” to “romantic-western.”
While I mostly enjoyed the film, I was put off by the homoerotic sex sequence between Pitt and Freeman, made all the worse by the decapitated head of a woman in the box. Fincher’s fetishy obsessions are evident all too much in this scene and really break the flow of the movie. After the weirdness of that particular sequence, the film comes back on track and barrels towards the end a bit briskly, but the closing parts of the film mostly tie together the loose ends (with some plot holes glaring—ie; if Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman were the same person, how did they talk to one another?).
Even with its flaws, Flight Club is a very fascinating look into the collapsing human psyche and a smartly veiled allegory for racism and incest in the south (much like the brilliant work of eroticism before it, “Deliverance”).
Four out of Six Thumbs Up
Fight Club is rated PG-13 for strong graphic brutal nonstop bloody sex and thematic elements.
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