American Psycho

American Psycho centres on a man named Patrick Bateman. He is a successful wealthy businessman with the expensive suits, the perfect body, and the cleanest apartment. He looks perfect. Except he has one small flaw. He is a psychopath by night. He lures his victims to his house and then brutally murders them, with an axe, a chainsaw, a nail gun, whatever he can get his hands on.

We get a feeling from the start that he isn't completely sane, his OCD is a big giveaway. quite ironic how everything has to be in its place no matter what, yet at night he obliterates it all in a second. Like a big release.

The business card seems to symbolise wealth and power, and it stirs the craziness in Bateman, encouraging him to murder the men whose cards are better than his.

As the film goes on, the more insane Bateman becomes, until he completely cracks and goes on a mass murder rampage, ending in a frantic call to his lawyer in which he says he doesn't think he can get away with it anymore. It ends with Bateman having a conversation with his lawyer over the message he left him. His lawyer doesn't believe him, mistaking Bateman for another client of his, and calling Bateman a coward. The ending is quite ambiguous, did he kill all those people or was it all his imagination?

I thought it was a good film, Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman was brilliant, he was arrogant, greedy and completely psychotic all in one go. Bale is notorious for his method acting and as his character is well built he visited the gym everyday to bulk up, which is clearly apparent in the film.

I noticed before he was going to do something brutal, Bateman would always make a speech about music. Phil Collins and Genesis, Whitney Houston, Huey Lewis and the News. It builds up the tension, till it explodes with lots of blood and guts, which happens a lot. The camera never lets you look directly at the murdering or even the mutilated body after, just a pool of bloody or a part of the body that hasn't been hacked at. Your imagination does the rest for you.