American Psycho [Blu-ray]

Patrick Bateman works in a business his father owns and looks like everyone else in his industry. His biggest concerns in life are getting a reservation the most exclusive restaurant, choosing the best business card, and torturing and killing women. In between grooming himself impeccably and creating a semblance of being normal, his homicidal tendencies threaten to overtake his vapid life.American Psycho is a dark and biting satire on 80's excess and toxic masculinity. The film brilliantly distills the extremes of the novel and gets all the large concepts across successfully. Patrick Bateman admits at the outset of the film that there is no real him, that he's constructed an illusion of a person. His appearance is impeccable and he looks just like everyone else on Wall Street: slick back hair, horn rimmed glasses, trim figure, and designer suits. As he talks about a figurative mask he has constructed, he tears off a literal face mask in an unexpectedly chilling and pat scene. Patrick knows what to say in front of people, admonishing a friend for an anti-semitic remark and advocating for helping the poor and equal rights for women, but it's vastly different from his actual opinions. He is never seen doing any actual work for his job and his girlfriend reveals that he doesn't even need it as it's owned by his father. He snaps back at her that he does it to fit in with everyone else. Every interaction with people who matter to him is carefully curated and designed to be what he views as the best of that realm. Much of the film is blur of designer clothes, upscale restaurants, luxury brands, and pop musicians.Even though he has groomed himself into what he thinks a rich man should be, Patrick fails on almost every front. He can't get a reservation at the most exclusive reservation called Dorsia. Even though it's extensively mentioned, we never see the building at all. He goes so far as to drag his drugged mistress to another restaurant and tells her it's Dorsia. She falls asleep during the dinner and wouldn't know where they were anyway, but it's a part of his fantasy. Patrick doesn't do any actual work at his job. His business card isn't the most impressive, much to his dismay that borders on panic. He looks so much like everyone else in his industry that they are regularly mistaken for each other because there is nothing distinguishing them. They are all essentially interchangeable with exactly the same looks, personalities, and opinions. By the end of the film, his lawyer reveals how people see him as a "dork" and a "boring, spineless lightweight." Despite trying to fit in, Patrick's carefully constructed facade fails.The rest of the film is the real Bateman underneath the facade. His true feelings come out when talking to people he views as beneath him. One of the first scenes in the film has him in a loud club ordering drinks from bartender. She refuses his drink tickets and he tells her, masked by the booming music, that he wants to kill her and play with her blood while addressing her by explicit names. He treats his secretary Jean appallingly, telling her to wear a skirt and heels because he prefers it and she's "prettier than that." Patrick's actions escalate as he approaches a homeless man on the street and lures sex workers to his house. He teases the homeless man with the possibility of help or a job, but only mocks him before brutally murdering him and his dog. The two sex workers he lures to his house are commanded on every action they take and what names to respond to on top of being only chosen for the color of their hair. When a colleague enrages him, Patrick escalates his behavior further and attempts to murder Carruthers in the bathroom, but the man sees the strangling as a sexual advance. A shocked and disgusted Bateman leaves with an inane explanation. Although it didn't end as he intended, Patrick was going to kill a man in a public place in broad daylight who he saw as beneath him.Although the whole film is amazingly shot, the scenes I noticed most were those with Patrick and the sex workers. Patrick chooses them for their blonde hair, tells them what name to respond to, and orchestrates their every move. This is the realization of his fantasy commanding the blonde women in his life, his girlfriend and his mistress, that would never happen because of their status. Even though he's paying them and bosses them around, he still craves the sex worker's approval and interest. They don't care where he works or what he does and are only there for their job. These women are objectified by Patrick, but not by the camera. They are portrayed as cautious, sensible women and the audience is squarely on their side. Their bodies are not sexualized or even focused on because Patrick is more interested in himself. The vast majority of violence takes place offscreen or out of view and I felt their horror and fear. Humanizing these women is such an important part of this film. These scenes could have easily been incredibly exploitative and objectifying in other hands.The rest of the film has Patrick's facade breaking away little by little. He has moments where he confesses an act to someone or says something completely outrageous that is almost always misinterpreted or simply ignored. Eventually, he confesses everything to his lawyer only to be completely dismissed and insulted. Patrick finally realizes his facade is a failure. He also either didn't commit the crimes at all or is entrenched in such a shallow society that it doesn't even matter because no one knows who anyone is and everyone is too self absorbed to look at anyone else. American Psycho is such a unique film that succeeds in being horror with a healthy dash of dark comedy that completely embodies the era and its excesses.

I started reading through the reviews of this movie, and over and over, I had to click on "No," this review was not "helpful" to me, whether the person gave it one star or five stars. After reading about 20 of them, I was beginning to think that either everyone watching it just isn't getting it or I'm as whacked out as Patrick Bateman. My take on this movie seems to be completely different from everyone else's (although I didn't read all 300 reviews: maybe someone in here has my take on it).First let me state my perspective. Judged by how many times I've watched it (about 10 times), this must be one of my favorite movies. I don't seem to be able to get enough of it, and my interpretation of it has evolved from bemused bafflement to a satisfied feeling that I really get it. Second, I did not read the book, and based on what I've read in these reviews, I'm glad I didn't, because I've been able to contemplate this movie without trying to relate it to the book, to contemplate it as an independent work of art that plays with the viewer's mind and challenges the viewer to figure this Patrick Bateman out. Those people responsible for it may have had some ideas triggered by the book, but this movie can stand on its own considerable merits.Unlike some reviewers, I am not in the least attracted by the character of Patrick Bateman. I find him completely contemptible and repulsive, and to allude to a line from the movie, I have nothing in common with him. Yet he is fascinating to watch and I can't help laughing hysterically at his total emptiness and delusions.Delusions bring up the point I want to make about this movie. At one level it is impossible to tell what is real and what is sheer delusion in Patrick Bateman's mind. What is really happening, and what is being imagined or dreamed by Patrick? Maybe he did kill a few people in this movie. But I can't tell whether he really did killed Paul Allen or whether this was merely one of his delusional fantasies. The movie surely gives enough examples of psychotic delusions on his part. Some of the things he says directly to women obviously were not actually said, because if they were, the women would have called for the bouncer to have him thrown out. As it was, they just ignore him. Some of the murders were utterly preposterous, as when he carefully aims the running chainsaw at the prostitute fleeing down the stairs and he throws it at her, stabbing her in the back when she is four flights of stairs below him. Come on! That never happened, even in the movie! Then the killing spree at the end OBVIOUSLY never happened! When he had the shootout with the cops, he takes a couple shots at them, never missing his human target from 100 yards away (do you know how hard that is?), and suddenly one of his bullets causes all the cop cars aligned against him to explode! Even HE is surprised, suddenly staring at his gun in disbelief that he could have done that with a single shot. This was such a string of carnage that it would have been all over the news and all the talk. Yet no one says a word about it when he meets with his associates the next day.When he revisits the apartment where he had dead bodies hanging in every closet, the place is pristine and is for sale. There's not a word from anyone that an apartment was found full of mutilated bodies. Why? Obviously, because it was all in his imagination! After he breaks down and confesses to his lawyer that he just went on a killing spree, he lawyer laughs because it is so preposterous. Such a thing would have made the headlines, yet the lawyer thinks it's just a sick joke, and he saw Paul Allen in London the day Patrick was supposed to have killed him.Yet there is ambiguity even here. All these Wall Street stockbrokers (every one of them younger than 30 and vice-presidents whose greatest status symbols are the classiness of their business cards and where they can get dinner reservations), all of them look and act alike and they are constantly misidentifying each other. Was it really Paul Allen he killed (if he killed one of his associates at all), was it really Paul Allen the lawyer saw in London? It is impossible to say, which is one of the most amusing ironies of this eternally entertaining movie.