Cinemavenger

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Fight Club

The first rule of a Fight Club review is that it should never start with a "first rule of" reference, but Cinemavenger doesn't give a fuck. So, the first rule of this Fight Club review is shut the fuck up, sit the fuck back, and enjoy a rare, One Finger review of a movie that's as awesome a watch today as it was when it came out more than blackjack years ago.

The second rule of this review is that admitting that Brad "Honey Bear Bong" Pitt is a good actor does not, in and of itself, make a guy gay. I can't tell you how many closet cases I've talked to who hate on Pitt even though they like him in a lot of movies. Yes, he's gay-for-a-day hot. He's also one hell of an actor, and he never phones in a performance.

The third rule of this review is that if you write off the nihilistic wake-up call that is Fight Club as bro culture bullshit, you're not paying attention. The whole point of the Narrator's (Edward "Scissorhands" Norton) journey from hopelessly disconnected office drone to personal - and wannabe public - revolutionary is that America's current flavor of faux capitalist, consumer culture is all bread and circuses and no substance, and it's specifically designed to keep the 99% too distracted to realize that the burning sensation they feel every day in their rectal regions is the 1% going to town on them without any lube.

When the Narrator meets Pitt's Tyler Durden, the two inadvertently start the titular fight club. Dudes of all types, white collar, blue collar, and no collar, flock to the underground, bare-knuckle boxing matches because they want to feel something, anything, in a world built to keep them numb and dumb.

The die-hard fight clubbers slowly morph into a militia of sorts, and things begin to spin out of control. While their goal of disrupting the stifling status quo and reclaiming a measure of financial independence plucks at the populist heartstrings, the movie doesn't shy away from shining a light on the dark side of mindless obedience. It's a shame the Capitol rioters didn't pick up on that before they guzzled Trump's Kool-Aid on January 6th.

Fight Club's knockout punch is its big twist, which is so flawlessly executed that anyone who spoils it, even decades later, deserves a Leto-level beat down.

February 12, 2021