Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #141 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-10-30
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 98 minutes

Special Features
16:9 Wide Screen
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital 5.1 English
Dolby Digital 5.1
Deleted Scenes
On Set Interviews
Trailer

Synopsis
Based on the popular novel by Bret Easton Ellis, Mary Harron's cinematic adaptation retains the over-the-top humor that made Ellis' book such a cult favorite. Christian Bale is hysterical as Patrick Bateman, the successful commodities broker whose disgust for everyone he encounters leads him to committing heinous murders. The film tackles all things 80s, including pop music, fashion, and the world of big business, all to hilarious effect. Graphic and brutal, AMERICAN PSYCHO is an unflinching satire, but one that should keep enlightened audiences laughing throughout.

Customer Reviews

"Don't just look at it, eat it!"
Patrick is as shallow as a man can get. He almost doesn't really exist; he's a human brand who works where he works because he wants to fit in, his life is based on magazine reviews and his daily activities centre on maintaining an image. His obsession with image is perfectly depicted in the fantastic scene where Bateman and chums compare business cards and the font/off-white colour of the card.

The human side of the man starts to surface, but it's the dark side of humanity. He wants control over people, he has to dominate them - and this manifests itself as a series of mutilations and murders.

The film is gloriously black, with constant comedy ensuring that the film never feels too dark - but never risking becoming a slapstick farce. The character of Bateman is so awful, but his narratives help us to (worryingly) enter his mind and see the world through his eyes. It's not often you find yourself warming to a heartless, self centred, psychopath, but that's exactly what happens in American Psycho. The scene where Bateman is with two prostitutes and constantly watching himself flexing his muscles in the mirror should have you despising the man, but he remains incredibly endearing. Much of this credit goes to Christian Bale who plays the role without seemingly taking it too seriously. The character is so ludicrous that you start to question if any of the events actually happened, or whether they were simply the constructions of a damaged mind, realised in daydreams and notepad doodlings.

In a nutshell: Over-the-top, ridiculous, and sometimes a bit grisly. Welcome to the 1980's - Bateman exists in a world of top restaurants, high class nightclubs, and expensive drugs. A world more ugly than it is glamorous. Everything you hated about the `80s is here, and a little more besides. Christian Bale shows us a character so vacuous that he ends up quite likeable, even though he has no redeeming factors.

What am I missing here?
I am told in other reviews that this film is "hilarious", that it is a "brilliant satire", that it is "laugh out loud" funny. Well, I smiled at the running business card gag but otherwise I watched it with mounting disbelief - all the more so when I got to the end and felt cheated by the "open verdict" trick. The big joke is how vapid, self-regarding and immmoral the 80's Wall Street scene was, but, once that has been established, it's hard to squeeze much more out of it. Tom Wolfe did a much better job of that in his satirical novel "Bonfire of the Vanities". It seems that some people find the graphic violence and animalistic sex funny; a phenomenon I've wondered at in films before: the more gruesome the event, the louder people laugh. In that regard, this film reminds me of another stinker which sharply divide reactions: "The Rules of Attraction" (see my review - I loathed that, too!). I guess your reaction to these films tells you more about the kind of person you are and your worldview; for me, the supposed satire just doesn't have the legs to sustain itself even over a short 90 minutes. Bale is a fine actor and all too believable in this ungrateful role - but he is so wholly unlikeable and repellant that you cannot identify in any way with him; he is just a monster and so the satire fails to bite if you cannot recognise the humanity within which has been perverted by greed and fear. Everyone in the film is a mess; thre's no balance to it. I'm sorry that I wasted my time watching it and it really worries me that there are people out there who love this kind of thing. It affirms nothing but simply exploits a fascination with the utter self-absorption and the lunacy that results.

Qualms (Book Vs. Film)
To begin, I should state that I enjoy this film...but it is a mere shadow, a synopsis, of the actual book, which is LEAGUES better. If you liked the film, do yourself a huge favour; read the book. The book grabs you by the balls and pulls you on one crazy ride through dark humour and neo-social criticism...whilst the movie only teases with it. I've read it cover to cover thrice over and I'm still not tired of it. The movie, however, really lacks the visceral, nihilistic, and insane tempo of the novel.

I really want to see someone come down and make a true adaption of "American Psycho"; not something that pulls most of it's punches. In the movie, they make it seem like Bateman never killed anyone...that he hallucinated it all. But, in the book, Bateman gets away with the murders he commits because nobody can place him anywhere he rightly was because he looks like all the other materialistic sheep in the crowd. He's gotten away with it all and, in the book, it seems to make it more clear that he had, in fact, killed all of those people. The novel does not end with Bateman sitting in the restaurant and detailing how people keep mistaking him for someone else, and mistaking his yuppie victims as other people. He did hallucinate a few things as a result of being tripped out on cocaine and steroids, but in the novel these things he hallucinates are symbolic of other things, such as the city being a vast wasteland devoid of moral fiber, and never do his trips involve the murders. He actually appears rather livid while performing acts of brutality...and out of his mind in normal social settings.

The horror of the situation is not that these murders occurred, it's that Bateman was robbed of making any impact on society through his rampage, and his victims are robbed of any significance as human beings because seemingly nobody realizes (or cares) that they are dead at all. They are all objects in this sense, or perhaps even less than objects, because it's the objects, the suits, the cars, the stereos, the business cards, that overshadow everything else in importance in the world of Patrick Bateman. In the end, Bateman just wanted desperately to be different from the rest of the pack; he wanted to be heard, and when everything wraps up he realizes he can never escape this cycle of materialism, where products are God and men/women are but mere objects to be discarded. It's a role reversal of value between animate and inanimate things that's made very clear during the progression of the novel.

I really don't think the film totally captured this. It was good, I enjoyed it, but felt it should of been played out much more viciously. It lost it's punch, and I suspect it was out of fear of the MPAA, or public outcry...but the thing is; the novel gained much of it's notoriety from the fact that it was so grotesquely offensive. To make a movie that glazes over 90% of the shocking quality of the novel (the child dying in the zoo, the hamster clawing through a human body) they essentially watered down the impact of story's end message. Then, they made it seem like the murders never actually occurred...which I think betrayed a large portion of what Ellis was trying to say with his book.

It's also one of the few books that's made me laugh out loud. The scene where Bateman fed a urinal cake covered in chocolate to his fiancé was funny as hell. Man, there were many moments in the novel I found hysterical. I also found myself giggling when he downed all that crack then walked into the Jewish restaurant, high and rabid out of his mind, demanding a cheeseburger and couldn't understand what Kosher meant, which just multiplied his fury. I also found some morbid humour in how he went to McDonald's after killing the bum, trying to do what he thought Al (the dead hobo) would of done, and ordered a milk shake extra thick, performing the whole act still covered in Al's red protoplasm.

But this should really be a review for the film...so I should reiterate that it IS a great film, for what it is. I think Bale was perfect for the role. He did a fantastic job; I really cannot imagine anyone else doing any better. I also think the screen writers got it wrong when they said that Tom Cruise was Bateman's idol on the special edition's director commentary (yet another proof of them not entirely grasping the novel). Bateman couldn't even remember the correct name of the film that Cruise was in (Cocktail, a very popular film during that time period), so it's doubtful he really idolized him. Bateman was far more influenced by Trump and a wide spectrum of serial killers and yuppies.

To conclude; pick up the book first...then catch the diluted film version.