Fight Club: Press
* * |
Sometimes, for variety, they beat up themselves. It's macho porn--the sex movie Hollywood has been moving toward for years, in which eroticism between the sexes is replaced by all-guy locker-room fights. [...] The movie is visceral and hard-edged, with levels of irony and commentary above and below the action. If it had all continued in the vein explored in the first act, it might have become a great film | |
| James
Berardinelli ReelViews |
* * * * |
With its kinetic style, visceral approach, compelling storyline, and powerful social message, Fight Club makes a commanding case to be considered the '90s version of A Clockwork Orange [...] Fincher's gritty, restless style turns it into a visual masterpiece. |
| Leonard Maltin | * * * ½ |
- |
| Robert
Horton Film.com |
. | Perhaps the most surprising thing about this movie, which means to shock, is that it's so relentlessly funny [...] Fincher's film is never less than dazzling to look at. |
| Desson Howie Washington Post |
. | There he is, in all his glory: Brad Pitt, that beautiful, chiseled chunk of celebrity manhood. You want him? Go see "Fight Club." You want action, muscle and atmosphere? You want boys bashing boys in bloody, living color? "Fight Club" is your flick, dude. [...] They have turned "Fight Club" into a treat for sensation-addicted eyes. |
| Richard Schickel Time Magazine |
. | Both actors are excellent [...] that illiberal, impious, inarticulate fringe that threatens the smug American center with an anger that cannot explain itself, can act out its frustrations only in inexplicable violence. |
| Jason Murphy Christian Spotlight on the Movies |
* * * * * |
Fight Club is probably the definitive film of generation X, Y (or whatever generations people under the age of 35 belong to). It is shocking, disturbing, possibly dangerous. But I haven't seen any film recently (even American Beauty) that explores the ills and shortcomings of our society so intelligently and so well. |
| Michael Atkinson Mr. Showbiz |
66% |
A fabulously berserk runaway train of a movie, David Fincher's Fight Club
is post- |
| Film.de | * * * * * |
... beeindruckt das apokalyptische Milleniumswerk mit visuellem Stil (sogar "Matrix"-Kamerafahrten konnte er sich nicht verkneifen), furchtlos agierenden Darstellern und inhaltlicher Fülle, die für gut zehn Filme ausgereicht hätte. |
| rottentomatoes.com | 73% |
- |
| Total Film | * * * * * |
Don't you dare leaving the century without seeing this movie! |
| Newsweek | . | Fincher's movie may strike people as brilliant, crazy or dangerous, but it will strike them |
| Lou Lumenick New York Post |
. | 'FIGHT Club" badly wants to be "A Clockwork Orange" for the millennium - and succeeds to a surprising extent until director David Fincher ends up sucker-punching the audience. [...] The more you think about them, the more annoying the contradictions are in "Fight Club." Tyler lectures the narrator that "self-improvement is masturbation" - but what a set of killer abs he's got! With its studiously edgy sets, frenetic editing and dialogue, and nonstop violence pandering to its target audience of under-25 males, "Fight Club" is as carefully calculated a product as the ones it inveighs against. |
| Adam
Smith Empire |
* * * * |
This Monstrous Movie (© Daily Mail) seems to be this year’s Crash/NBK/Reservoir Dogs, a film so devastatingly toxic that its very existence is not only responsible for every post-kebab scuffle, but the soaring divorce rate, teenage alcoholism and the terminal inadequacy of frozen pizza. In fact, though definitely not one for the kiddiewinks, Fincher’s film is a molasses-black comedy shot through with his blistering, hyper-kinetic style, a score that punches you in the chest, and standout performances from Pitt and Norton. [...] In the end, Fincher’s brilliant film is, ironically, short in the cojones department |
| Michael
Wilmington Chicago Tribune |
. | A bloody hymn to machismo and violence? A homoerotic male-bonding romance between fist-fighting buddies Brad Pitt and Edward Norton? A trash job on American womanhood, embodied in scruffy, sexy semi-heroine Helena Bonham Carter? Maybe you're expecting another hunk of amoral '90s Hollywood techno-carnage? Another big, bad, bloody, exploitive blockbuster about nasty people doing unspeakable things? Uh-Uh. Not quite. Surprisingly, "Fight Club" turns out to be a movie that satirizes and examines violence far more than exploiting it. [...] Obviously, "Fight Club's" plot is a satire of the fascist potential in youthful male violence, and it's done in a deliberately wild, joking, over-the-top style, climaxing with that jaw-dropping last-minute switcheroo. Incredibly, though, some over-solemn critics have taken this movie as a paean to violence and incitement to fascism -- which is a bit like describing "Dr, Strangelove" as an incitement to nuclear war or "Network" as an argument for bad television. [...] "Fight Club" is a movie that deliberately goes too far, dances on the edge. In this hellishly funny picture, loaded with irreverent sendups of what seems most false, hypocritical or dangerous in our modern (or post-modern) culture. |
| Weitere Reviews | . | Harry Knowles (Ain't It Cool News) - First
Version Harry Knowles (Ain't It Cool News) - Second Version Moriarty (Ain't It Cool News) Review of someone who didn't get the film at all but still provides some interesting trains of thought. |