Besides that about half of it is a plot summary (not a review), you seem to be avoiding actually praising the movie. It "should be applauded for going out on a philosophical limb" and yet you do not applaud it. Perhaps the catharsis you seek actually did happen in some other film of 1999, but not for me. I'm sorry you didn't like it because it "punched for the head" but I like mental stimulation. I also like movies which leave me dizzy, movies that make me want to watch them again. Maybe a second viewing would bring you the catharsis you seem to expect from a film which has the rare quality of being challenging. -Ben Hendricks

Ben is referring to my original take on Fight Club, which I shall repost for your benefit right now.

The story is told through the eyes of Norton's nameless narrator (the movie refers to him as Jack at times, so I will do the same here), a flunky for an unidentified automaker by day, an insomniac always. Jack spends entire evenings sifting through Ikea catalogues and staring hopelessly at TV infomercials. He tells his physician he's miserable, dying inside, but the doctor responds that if he really wants to know about pain, he should meet with victims of testicular cancer.

Jack visits a support group for such people, and their stories cause him to weep uncontrollably. At last, feelings. A good cry helps him sleep like a baby; soon, he becomes an eager tourist of like meetings, but Marla (Carter), another phony who has begun making the support group rounds for "free cake and coffee," interrupts his good time. Maybe her beauty distracts him, or maybe he just can't deal with his own lie reflected back, but Jack is made positively irate by Marla's presence on his turf.

He takes a break from the 12-step world for company trips, and on one plane ride he meets Tyler Durden (Pitt-has he ever been this magnetic?), a soap salesman with the gift of gab. They exchange business cards, and when Jack returns home to find his apartment bombed out (the stove's pilot light was left on), he calls Tyler. Three pitchers of beer later, Jack has a place to stay.

Tyler introduces him to a seedier life. In Jack's new digs, the electricity must be turned off during a rainstorm. The shower runs brown water. The staircase could collapse at any moment. But this is to his delight: for once, he's not slave to his stuff-expensive furnishings and appliances. (Tyler tells him, "We don't own things, the things own us.")

Tyler offers Jack another release through fighting. What starts out as a few innocuous swings at one another in a parking lot turns into an underground sensation, with various disillusioned men meeting one night of the week in the basement of a dive to scrap. (Tyler, in essence, extols the virtues of nihilism.) Marla disrupts Jack's happiness again, though, when she worms her way back into his life through a sexual relationship with Tyler.

After only three films (Alien3, Se7en, The Game), Fincher has developed a distinct style-there is a consistent tone running through his filmography which could be weakly characterized as "bleak". Certainly, his works are linked by visual motifs, such as the most piercing flashlights this side of Spielberg, dank locales, flash frames, and low angles. (His technique is a bit more playful this time around; his acknowledgment of the medium itself in one scene is downright postmodern.) Fight Club also recalls The Game in its second half as Jack's reality changes and he no longer knows who is trustworthy.

But Fincher's past examinations of identity crisis (consider also Se7en's villain) were emotionally hard-hitting, and while Fight Club should be applauded for going out on a philosophical limb (much is made of Jack and Tyler's yin yang dynamic, as symbolized by Jack's table, and how violence will turn you into a drone as much as sitting under the fluorescent lights in a cubicle might), it is unmoving.

Cynicism gets in the way at the start, when we're asked to laugh at truly pitiable characters, including Meat Loaf's sympathetic cancer survivor (the camera keeps lingering on his large, feminine breasts). (Other jokes go over better.) When the narrative shifts gears to Marla's subplot, we learn that she's a burnout (hardly the femme fatale the ads would have you believe), and little else. She exists to inform us about Jack, so we vest little interest in their relationship.

By film's end, so many concepts and plot twists have been thrown our way that we're left dizzy at best. The final shot is a feast for the eyes and ears, but Fincher denies us what Jack wants and periodically achieves: catharsis. Fight Club is a seriocomic work of crazed genius (I'd call it cinematic pop art), but its punches aim for the head, not the heart.

Me: The problem I had in reviewing Fight Club was tiptoeing around its big twist ending, which turned the film into the portrait of ambivalence. I made the mistake of attacking the film for not being emotional enough, which is silly, in retrospect; my beef with Jim Uhl's soundbite-friendly screenplay is its refusal to treat themes of isolation and anti-consumerism as anything but random musings. Cinematically, director David Fincher makes quite an impact, probably my best defense for giving Fight Club three stars initially, but as a critique of corporate America, it hardly challenges, in my opinion. (The story celebrates anarchy as a cathartic trip and then tell us that anyone who wants to start a revolution is, well, nuts.)

Like American Beauty, Fight Club says there's got to be more to life than the proverbial "this", but neither can come up with a valid alternative to the malaise. You were right to take me to task for too much plot summary, but I did that because I couldn't get behind the film itself in a big way, nor could I pinpoint what it was, at the time, that disappointed me so. (Know that it was the release I most looked forward to in 1999.) I promise to see Fight Club again--in fact, I'm excited by the prospect--but unlike yourself, I didn't come away from it feeling the right kind of dizzy.

Ben's turn again:

Thanks for writing back Bill, I admire your willingness to give it another try. I think that it may seem conflicting to place anarchy on a pedastel and then take a swipe at any movement that might be associated, but in my opinion this is where the film really comes through. Norton feels trapped, finds a way to gain insight into some real values in life that he hasn't been exposed to (although they are very much based around his age and gender), and then when he tries to involve other members of society he finds the same traps that he once tried to escape. Perhaps the ultimate message is one of individuality?

I did see parallels between FC and American Beauty, as both main characters found relief in such similar ways and gained an interesting moral perspective in the process. But I think FC was much better because it avoided many of the pratfalls of standard obligatory/suburbia-film "character development" and for the most part jumped right into the message.

I have swamped you with this information for three reasons:

1. To thank Ben again for his well-considered feedback

What do I think of Fight Club these days? I am reminded of an early exchange between "Jack" and Tyler:

A bright critic whose name now escapes me compared the film to a Rorschach test. He or she wrote this review in an attempt to reconcile Fight Club's critical reception, for no two panners (or ravers) seemed to dislike (or admire) the same things about it. Perhaps the film is intended as a garden from which we pluck the ideas with the most personal significance. As an angry young man squarely in the demographic for this fable, I did extract some worthy concepts from the noise--the line "I'm a thirty year old boy," little affirming notions of God and friendship, all ingested subconsciously, for the most part.

Pardon me for extending this dopey metaphor, but what you're left with after harvesting these ideas is narrative fertilizer. In what is hopefully the last gasp of nineties irony, Tyler is revealed as merely a projection of Jack's subconscious. The use of a Seven Years in Tibet marquee in the background of one shot is, well, clever, as if Jack picked up on the star of the moment in devising an alter ego for himself. But beyond that canny throwaway, the twist reduces the film to the story of a guy suffering multiple-personality disorder. Befitting of the schizophrenic experience that is Fight Club? Maybe, but no less maddening.

I have tried to dismiss the logic problems associated with this all-consuming turn of plot, but they continue to needle me. How does a man who is having full-blown conversations with himself win the trust of so many people? There's the Insane Dictator Defense, I suppose--Caligula ruled Rome, after all.

Nope, doesn't cut it.

Although its complacent climax is at odds with the chaotic ambitiousness that precedes it, the brilliantly edited Fight Club is compulsively watchable always, and hardly the depraved Grand Guignol that Michael Medved or (say what?) Boogie Nights director Paul Thomas Anderson would have you (mis)believe.

Still with me? Time to discuss the DVD. It took me about fifteen hours, not counting the twenty pages worth of liner notes and graphics, to explore this ornately packaged, comprehensive (to say the least) 2-disc set; let's just say right about now I feel Fight Clubbed to a pulp.

Pay attention to the copyright warning--Project Mayhem has tampered with it. The menus (designed by New Wave Entertainment) will bring a smile to those in the know, for each option is prefaced with "I am Jack's..." (for example, "I am Jack's chapter selections"). Note: an Easter egg here leads to a page of credits. (There is another Easter egg on the second disc--"DVD Review" posted this great explanation of how to access it.)

The first thing I visited was the THX Optimode set-up, which helped me fine-tune my monitor and sound system according to the company's niggly standards. If you don't already use Video Essentials or the AVIA Home Theater Guide, performing these calibrations will definitely improve the performance of your set-up.

The 2.40:1 letterboxed, 16x9-enhanced transfer of Fight Club is superb. I had previously underestimated Jeff Cronenweth's (son of Jordan, who shot Blade Runner) images; must have been the print I saw, for the ridiculous amount of detail, the perfect black level, and the richness of the purposely sickly colour palette amazes. Whenever possible, the film was photographed under natural lighting conditions, a technique that typically mutes contrast, but not here.