There's rarely such a dramatic, chilling and shocking film as American Psycho graced the silver screen. In this similarly high-brow and grotesque analysis of the ultimate yuppie, Mary Harron crosses those frontiers that few directors have been bold enough to move past.
Above all, it's most disturbing that the funniest moments of the film aren't the liquor-drenched cocktail parties we're used to laughing at, but rather the grotesque murders that the audience has usually cringed at.
Like Alfred Hitchcock, Harron opts to film her scenes of love and murder in much the same way. Patrick Bateman (a beautifully creepy Christian Bale), the protagonist, dominates these sections of the film, receiving equal pleasure from sexual gratification and ending existence. Bateman is much more relaxed than the woman he has sex with, or the person he murders so that he can pay meticulous attention to specifics of those activities. He knows the most thrilling positions and knows which tactics make a mess less than others.
And at any level, the main character of the film is not a master. He leaves intimate partners in pain and is often at odds over murders. Isn't Bateman fine. Instead, he is an egotistical Harvard graduate with facial goods of salon standard and a profound resentment of those with better business cards or a more luxurious apartment than his.
American Psycho opens against a white backdrop with black credits and what appears to be blood running down the screen. The red drops are proving to be something else, but the illusion is still powerful. This sets the tone for a movie in which many things aren't as they manifest to be, and their presence is sometimes more compelling than their actual being.
However, one undeniable thing is the setting of the image. Harron's adaptation of the novel by Bret Easton Ellis (which I confess I haven't read) depicts a Manhattan of the upper class which only has some truths today but was very accurate in the 1980s. It's a place where a person's willingness to swing last-minute reservations reflects on their standing, making a suit is always speculated at write-off lunches (paying for platinum credit cards, of course) and sexual assault isn't a big deal.
Bateman warns his coworkers that he's "just not there" and "absolutely nuts." But these words fall on deaf ears. As he chases a young girl to protect his newly used sexual organ with nothing more than a chainsaw, it is evident that Bateman is indeed an American psycho. He has moments of grace, moments of genius and moments when he appears to be nothing more than a painting. The film possesses identical features.
But, in the end, it is the moments that stand out when the movie reaches greatness. Nevertheless, the picture presented to many viewers not prepared for such an intellectual bloodbath could well be one of insanity.