Fight Club

My Grade:  A+

The first rule of fight club is you do not talk about fight club.  The second rule is similar, but rules were meant to be broken, right?  So let's talk Fight Club.  It's David Fincher's 1999 adaptation of a darkly comedic novel by Chuck Palahnuik.  Jim Uhls (who also wrote the script for 2008's Jumper) wrote the screenplay which is shocking because Fight Club is amazing and Jumper is terrible.  Fight Club was nominated for an Oscar and comes in at #10 on IMDB.com's list of top 250 films of all time while Jumper won a teen choice award for Choice Movie Actress: Action/Adventure (Rachel Bilson).

Fight Club is about a regular guy, the Narrator (Edward Norton).  He has an exceptionally mediocre existence.  The only thing that stands out about him is his insomnia.  When his doctor won't give him medicine, he claims he's in pain.  Then the doctor tells him about a testicular cancer support group claiming "that's pain."  When the narrator goes, he finds an odd comfort in the idea of support groups... so he gets addicted to them and goes to a different one every night.

He's fine again until he meets Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) who is also a "tourist," going to support groups just for something to do.  It gets so bad that he can't sleep again.  Then he gets home from a business trip to find his apartment blown up.  In need of a place to stay, he calls Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), whom he met on the plane.  After a bunch of beers, Tyler asks the narrater to hit him as hard as he can.  They start fighting, then do it on other nights, guys notice, they get to meet in the basement of the bar, and their Fight Club is born.

Even though Tyler and the Narrator founded Fight Club together, Tyler starts to really take control of it and takes it in a whole new direction.  This new direction includes petty crime as well as an eerie anti-establishment dogma.  It gets so out of control that the Narrator has to try and stop it.  Will he be able to overcome his own personal demons and stop it?  Watch it to find out.

Fight Club is one of the best movies ever made.  It is well-acted, looks amazing, has an stunning twist at the end, is hilarious, tells a very engaging story, etc.  More importantly, it has a point rather than just being fun to watch.  It's about not leading a complacent life, battling your inner demons so that you can be a better person, and not being controlled by material possessions.

The best thing about this film is that you can watch it over and over and get something more out of it each time.  Even after finding out the twist, watching it again is like watching a whole new film.  But, the first time you see it, if you just let the twist hit you when it's supposed to hit you... you will be in shock.  When I first saw it, I was literally speechless (which doesn't happen very often to me).

Also, this is Brad Pitt's greatest role ever.