Fight Club starring Edward Norton, Brad Pitt

Director: David Fincher

Amazon.com
All films take a certain suspension of disbelief. Fight Club takes perhaps more than others, but if you're willing to let yourself get caught up in the anarchy, this film, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, is a modern-day morality play warning of the decay of society. Edward Norton is the unnamed protagonist, a man going through life on cruise control, feeling nothing. To fill his hours, he begins attending support groups and 12-step meetings. True, he isn't actually afflicted with the problems, but he finds solace in the groups. This is destroyed, however, when he meets Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), also faking her way through groups. Spiraling back into insomnia, Norton finds his life is changed once again, by a chance encounter with Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), whose forthright style and no-nonsense way of taking what he wants appeal to our narrator. Tyler and the protagonist find a new way to feel release: they fight. They fight each other, and then as others are attracted to their ways, they fight the men who come to join their newly formed Fight Club. Marla begins a destructive affair with Tyler, and things fly out of control, as Fight Club grows into a nationwide fascist group that escapes the protagonist's control.
Fight Club, directed by David Fincher (Seven), is not for the faint of heart; the violence is no holds barred. But the film is captivating and beautifully shot, with some thought-provoking ideas. Pitt and Norton are an unbeatable duo, and the film has some surprisingly humorous moments. The film leaves you with a sense of profound discomfort and a desire to see it again, if for no other reason than to just to take it all in.
Additional features
The first rule of Fight Club may be that you don't talk about Fight Club, but that didn't stop the powers that be from assembling four separate commentaries for you to partake of in your viewing pleasure of the Fight Club DVD. Listen to director David Fincher solo, or with stars Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helena Bonham Carter; novelist Chuck Palahniuk and screenwriter Jim Uhls discuss the differences between the book and the film; and the film's design team dissects the numerous visual effects that went into the film. Wretched excess? Hardly. If any film was worthy of such intimate dissection, it's this one, and the two-disc DVD set is a film aficionado's dream. The first disc, containing the film and the commentaries, is one of the best film-to-DVD transfers you'll see, with nifty, seamless interactive menus. The second disc is given over entirely to extras, from storyboards and dissections of seminal sequences to alternate filmings of certain scenes, to deleted scenes that didn't make the final cut (with helpful explanations placing them in context, noting why they weren't used, and showing the scenes that did make the final cut). There's also just as much information given over to the promotion and marketing of the film as there is the production of it; you'll find innumerable trailers, including Internet-only clips and Norton and Pitt's hilarious "public service announcements." And keep an eye out for the fake "warning" at the beginning of the film as well as the hidden smiley-face that will take you to some hilarious Fight Club promotional items, including the "Your life is ticking away one minute at a time" clock, ripe for desktop service. All in all, this is one of the best DVD sets you'll ever find, in terms of technology and information.

 

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