Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1459 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-07-05
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 134 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
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. Spiralling 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. --Jenny Brown

Synopsis
FIGHT CLUB is narrated by a lonely, unfulfilled young man (Edward Norton) who finds his only comfort in feigning terminal illness and attending disease support groups. Hopping from group to group, he encounters another pretender, or "tourist," the morose Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), who immediately gets under his skin. However, while returning from a business trip, he meets a more intriguing character--the subversive Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). They become fast friends, bonding over a mutual disgust for corporate consumer-culture hypocrisy. Eventually, the two start Fight Club, which convenes in a bar basement where angry men get to vent their frustrations in brutal, bare-knuckle bouts. Fight Club soon becomes the men's only real priority; when the club starts a cross-country expansion, things start getting really crazy.
Like Tyler Durden himself, director David Fincher's FIGHT CLUB, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, is startlingly aggressive and gleefully mischievous as it skewers the superficiality of American pop culture. Outstanding performances by Norton and Pitt are supported by a razor-sharp script and an arsenal of stunning visual effects that include computer animation and sleight-of-hand editing. One of the most unique films of the late 20th century, FIGHT CLUB is a pitch-black comedy of striking intensity.

Customer Reviews

You are not the films you like
when it opened in the U.S to tepid business, there was widespread misjudgement that it was another testosterone-fuelled man-flick about bare-knuckle fighting. don't make this mistake. those who had read Palahniuk's corrosive social satire knew exactly what to expect. the film begins in the Medula Oblongata of the brain and explores every corrupt brain cell of today's culture. nobody is safe - Starbucks, Ikea and their children, which pretty much encompasses most of the developed world's inhabitants, the corporations, the small businesses, educated and uneducated. the main theme is the crisis of middle-class masculinity and is set in an anonymous city, much like Seven, and is a world of oppressive conformity where nobody has the power or will to break away, least of all Ed Norton's lead character. Norton plays an unconsuming drone (in the same vein of Anthony Perkins' Norman Bates in Psycho)and Brad Pitt, the enlightened anti-social (or perhaps anti-society) Tyler Durden. The cast is flawless, with Jared Leto playing a role with more importance than is realised, as Angel Face and Helena Bonham Carter sheds her corset for a female role to die for, displaying all the nihilism and apathy that the film requires. like Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, this book was also deemed unfilmable but Fincher's ability behind the camera trashes another dictionary entry. the film ends on as much of an ambiguous point as it can muster, because in the world portrayed on film, nothing can be taken for what it really is. after this, it seems impossible to go back to your ordinary job and your ordinary life and indeed, ordinary films.

Have you heard about Tyler Durden?
Words can't describe the intelligence and pure brilliance displayed by this masterpiece. This is a cult-classic that demands to be seen again and again, not only because of how stupidly good it is, but just to get your head round its different messages, meanings and twisted logic.

This is a story of self-discovery, taking the main character (played brilliantly by Edward Norton) through a struggle with the very foundations of our modern society and his own twisted state of mind. Brad Pitt shows yet again that he has far more to offer than just his looks, providing a fantastically confident weird 'Tyler Durden'. Every other actor fits their part like a glove without exception and each makes a convincing and valuable contribution to the film, a rare thing in modern cinema.

David Fincher (also director of Se7en) does everything right in Fight Club. Nothing, and i mean NOTHING, is in this film by accident. Every tiny detail has been carefully planned and thought through; whether it be the subliminal flashing images, the intense fight scenes or the psychological mind games constantly being played between the characters and even between the director and the audience.

To explain the storyline any further would be an exercise in futility but the ending makes the film what it is, so whatever you think of it, persevere to the end.

This is my favourite film of all time and it has a huge cult following for a very good reason. Watch Fight Club and challenge your mind and your life like you never have before; that's how powerful and relevant this film is.

5stars, without a doubt

Stunning peice of cinema gold
So, it's a film which spouted inevitable tabloid controversy, didn't do terribly well at the box office, got at best mixed reviews by critics, then through word of mouth and fast rocketing DVD sales has easily entered into every top films list composed since. It's appropriate that Fight Club's true quality was revealed to the critics by the public rather than the other way around.
The film follows Edward Norton's insurance drone, a bored, soulless man who feels emasculated and numbed by his pointless existence. He lives out his life like anyone else, dull job, IKEA furniture, he's as uniform and grey as any man you pick out on the street.
His life, however, takes a dramatic turn when he meets Tyler (played by Brad Pitt in his best acting role to date). Tyler is charismatic, intelligent, and intriguing. When Norton's apartment is destroyed in a mysterious accident Pitt invites him to crash at his, but then comes the critical request 'hit me'. And so it begins, the two new friends begin holding recreational fights in parking lots which quickly blossom into a the Fight Club of the title where frustrated, emasculated, average men can beat the living hell out of each other with their bare fists.
These fights aren't vindictive, these men are not enemies, the fights make these men friends, comrades, drifting souls all screwed over and repressed by the same system. We often see them embracing with almost post-coital grins on their faces in the bloody aftermath of a fight. Fighting reminds Jack (Norton's character is actually nameless but most refer to him as Jack) not only that he is alive, but that he is a man, that there is a fundamental primal part of him which can be repressed by society but never eradicated completely.
The Fight Club quickly spawns Tyler's new and secretive idea, Project Mayhem. The culmination of Project Mayhem is stunning but I won't tell you what that is because it would spoil the movie.
This is a very deep and multi-layered film, what do you think it's about? Is it a satire on the way feminism, though achieving liberation for women, has made men's liberation next to impossible due to anti-male prejudice? Is it and expression the basic unfulfillment and frustration of the everyday person in a capitalist society? Is it an eye-opening perspective on the way our most basic needs become repressed and dirtied by modern life? I'm not going to tell you, I know what I think, but this film is so deep and open that half the point is trying to work out what it says TO YOU.
So why buy it? It's smart, it's brutal, it's highly re-watchable, and it's a film everyone (men and women alike) needs to see. One of those 'greatest films ever' that actually deserves the title.
I could write a ten page essay on this film, but for now I'll just leave you with a few words of advice: Go and watch it now, it's truly brilliant.
"My eyes are open"