American Psycho

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In Soviet America, you sue MPAA!
Has anyone seen American Psycho or read the book? and if so can they explain what actually happened? i had therioes but never quite understood it.



Female assassin extraordinaire.
wow, no one responded to you yet?!

I've seen it ... wrote a review on it actually, buried somewhere on another computer. In any case, it's a very black comedy based off a key book of the 1980s regarding the corruption of character in American society during that time. The rat race, the corporate ladder, the near religious superficiality. The book was bitingly sarcastic (so I've heard) and apparently the movie did a good job of capturing this.

Basic plot: A young "perfect" corporate guy is a virtually empty human who takes extreme care with his physical and social appearance. He is proud of his ability to "mask" himself. The opening has an amusing play on what the trailer dubbed his "mask of sanity." This guy's life is also pretty empty-false friends, no real love or warmth in his life, just superficiality. He has a kinky sex life which he does more for the fashion of it than the pleasure, and he gets more pleasure out of taping himself and posing than anything else. Then he goes off the deep end with his "game face" ... starts killing for fun. Film gets crazier and crazier with his behavior and antics, and all the time he does it with a huge smile (Christian Bale had his teeth straightened and whitened for the role).

The director got caught up in the things she was trying to say and lost her way between the humor and the sarcasm ... it got hysterical, to the point where I laughed I was so shocked at something over the top or just plain ridiculous. Something to watch though if only for something sharp and amusingly disturbing.

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Why do I watch movies? If I didn't I'd be playing video games.



I personally didn't see much of this movie (too young to see it all anyway)...but I did hear a rather funny part about business cards that I thought was fairly witty:

My God! It's got a watermark!



Female assassin extraordinaire.
my god man, go to bed!!

actually, that whole scene about the business cards was just hilarious. they talked not only about the watermark, but the card stock, card color, print, and _centering_. Very sick. Bateman got so upset someone else's cards were better he perspired.



Yes, I do remember some of that. Very clever stuff...offbeat, but very funny.

Hey, you're up too, arn't you? There is no rest for...uh...me. It's nearly 2AM here so I will be heading off to sleep soon.

Oh and congratulations - in just one day you've managed to become the 3rd highest poster here on MovieForums.



In Soviet America, you sue MPAA!
We'll thanks for the info. For what it was American Psycho was a good movie. I'm going to start reading the book for school. I liked the movie, except for the guy below me and my friends, wearing a trench coat. And whenever there was nudity on the screen, quite often, you could hear his coat rustling. It was the scariest party of the movie. That movie makes you look at people differently though.
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Female assassin extraordinaire.
eww! was it Pee Wee? Just kidding, I really like Reubens.



In Soviet America, you sue MPAA!
I just got done reading American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis. My god. This book is so graphic and disturbing. The images this book give you are burned into me mind forever. The detail that the author provides is so vivid and describitve that you can picture it all happening. And thats a picture I never wanted to see. As for the ending, which is why I started this thread in the first place, yes, he did kill all the people. Although in the book he killed almost double the amount of people. Although I do think the movie was a PERFECT adaptation of the book. It captured all of the emotions of it, yet still manages to do this with out as much sex, which the book was extra-describitive of, and gore, which was even more describitve. But the worst part about the whole American Psycho is, what kind of research did Ellis have to do for this book? He must be a real psycho.



Female assassin extraordinaire.
Hmm, it's actually part of a writer's craft to be able to let themselves go and sink into what they're writing ... be it about a psycho or whatever.

i'm a writer, by the way. and i've gone deep and far on various topics with just my imagination and had people write and talk to me like I've been through it too ... and when I tell them I haven't they're really shocked.

it is also part of the writer's craft to know how to hold onto the self and your sanity when you do it. so i'd hope this author of American Psycho ISN'T really that sick. Just willing to go places most people aren't ... and to take you there along with him. He's obviously succeeded ... heheh.



I watched this picture a few weeks ago and I am still trying to figure it out.
well, at least reading this thread has shed 'some' light on 'some' of the things that happened.
this was a really strange movie.
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In Soviet America, you sue MPAA!
Yea it was a really werid movie. Very strange. Makes you think differently about people. Excellent acting though. Plot just needs work. Book is VERY weird though.



I rented American Psycho last weekend, and while I enjoyed most of the movie, it just got too outrageous toward the end for my tastes (the throwing the chainsaw down the stairwell thing was a little over the top). And the film was certainly weird. I haven't read the book, either, so I can't compare the movie to the book.



Yeah, so he did do all the killings, yeah ?

So what was that bit at the end where his solicitor/lawyer (whichever side of the pond you're on) said that he'd had dinner with Paul Allen twice in Paris ?

Can someone answer me this ?

Ta,

DtDD

(personally I thought the movie was suprficial in more ways than one)



Originally posted by Drop TheDeadDonkey
Yeah, so he did do all the killings, yeah ?

So what was that bit at the end where his solicitor/lawyer (whichever side of the pond you're on) said that he'd had dinner with Paul Allen twice in Paris ?

Can someone answer me this ?
The lawyer saying he had dinner with Paul Allen overseas could mean two different things. One, it could mean that the killings were all a figment of Bale's imagination. Or since all those Wall Street Types look alike (a running theme in the movie is that Bale's character is confused with someone else), the lawyer had dinner with someone he thought to be Paul Allen, but wasn't.

I think the whole point of the film is that you don't know whether the killings were real or not.



yeah i agree about the ending. it could mean two things--either that these people are all such the SAME people--all these corporate guys that it gets to be you can't tell them apart.

but i think what REALLY happened, and i haven't read the book so don't hold me to this, is that these were just figments of his imagination. he had nothing in his life, so he invented his life, and it got to the point where he didn't realize the difference between reality and his imagination. It would explain when Chloe Sevigny goes through his journal and finds all of the pictures. Also, it explains the ending, when that guy asks about him.

Brett Easton Ellis's characters are always unforgiving--these changeless creatures of the 80s. His commentary on that time period is what is most startling and interesting, I think.
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What the?? That's not what I got out of the ending. I thought they knew he killed everybody but they were a respected company so they covered it up leaving him trapped in his role as a killer. You know how they say serial killers want to be caught, he wanted to be caught so it would end, but they covered it up and now he couldn't be caught so he was in misery. I thought this was a GREAT movie, I would buy it but people might think I'm some kind of psycho nut case because I love it so much. There's no question in my mind if he did it or not. I have no clue what you people are talking about. He was psycho, he killed everybody. Killing people because they have a nicer business card is not superficial, he was psycho. It made good sense to him. Son of Sam started killing people because of his neighbors dog's incessant barking. He thought the dog was trying to make him nuts. Either he was right or he was nuts already. It may not make sense to you and me but to a psycho it does. That's what makes them psycho. Sorry I'm getting worked up but I loved this movie. Where's my chainsaw? Lol> The chainsaw part was great too, btw.



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I've read the book and seen the film. I preferred the movie because it didn't go into such detail about both the sexual and violent escapades of Bateman.

About the ending. The book was far more subtle in expressing the idea that the murders were all imagined. I think, the one flaw to Mary Harron's otherwise assured direction was the fact that she, more or less, emphasised the fact that Bateman was a murderer only in his mind, not in reality.

I mean, the chainsaw scene couldn't have happened in reality, could it? He threw the chainsaw done the stairs of an apartment building. Nobody heard the chainsaw. And the chainsaw landed directly on his victim. Nonsense! Bateman had an overactive imagination due to the sheer boredom of his existence.
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Okay, so if he didn't kill them why didn't all the people he imagined dead appear in the closing scene alive and happy so we would know they were still alive?



bigvalbowski's Avatar
Registered User
Okay...

Notice the fact that everyone he kills in the movie is a complete stranger. None of them move in his social circle. If he was such a cold killer why didn't he kill the girlfriend who dumped him? Why didn't he kill the office pal who came on to him? It is my theory that everyone he kills was fictional.

The only exception to this rule was the killing of Jared Leto's character. Leto was a guy who he socialised with and yet he seemingly killed him. However, we find out later that Leto is alive and well. He's been sighted in London. WTF? But we saw the murder. Again, Bateman's imagination. Subconsciously Bateman knew that Leto was leaving for London, however the insane Bateman didn't know it. He's still a psychopath, even if the evil Bateman is very much a controlled animal.

Other points. Why was Bateman so frightened of the police officer? Because he's a scared yuppie. He's no tough guy! And the scenes where he mutters some term under his breath like: "What do you do?" - "Murders and Executions". However the person he is talking to hears this as "Mergers and Acquisitions". I think Bateman probably had the balls to say something like murders and acquisitions as long as he was in a loud, crowded room. However, Bateman doesn't have the cajoles to kill anyone.