When your idea of proving one's manhood is going out to the world, spreading violence, and joining an underground gung-ho fighting society, then this film is just right up at your alley. But if your idea of a correct film should be both politically and sociologically upright in its context, then Fight Club is your worst enemy.

However, one's critical viewing shouldn't be only biased on the message but in general, should be on the whole film itself. I actually liked Fight Club, for its daring cinematography, clever, witty dialogues, impressive performances, and even for its head-scratching message to the audience, I find it likeable that it makes me want to up there, shed my shirt away and dig in for some hard-knock blood-splashing punching-the-gut as well as the face. Films had never been tougher than this.

It starts off with an exciting premise, one that you will surely know you're watching a really good film. Edward Norton stars as a depressed insomniac, whose life and job easily bores him to death, and his nights of sleeplessness doesn't help him in any other way. He brilliantly narrates the world around him in a form of a social satire; the way people behaves as if director David Fincher wanted to tell the story through the movement of cameras. Back to Norton, in order for him to ease pain, he joins a group counselling (for the testicular cancer patients even though he isn't one, as well as the tuberculosis meetings). Good for him, he discovers all of this to help him sleep. Until he meets Marla (played darkly but humurously by Helena Bonham Carter with a sniping tongur), who gets in his way and messes his life more.

Another key encounter was in an airplane, where Norton meets the character of Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden. The most funny thing was, Durden sells soap, and minutes later as Norton arrived outside the building of his apartment, he saw it was all in burning rubble. He called Durden, and so everything ensues from that meeting as Durden speaks "Hit me hard", apparently wanting to be hit across the face. They had a fight, and thank God, says Norton, he's cured of his insomniac nature - but only to get worse in the later parts.

Plot-wise, it also gets worse. This was where Fight Club starts to lose its fine grip. Somehow I did not understand Fight Club, it's satirical philosophy, or even Durden trying to amass his own army to become men of the world - by what? Blowing off buildings and causing havoc all over the place? Tyler Durden is such a mystical and mysterious character and Brad Pitt's embodiment is overwhelmingly appreciated, but his reasons are too inconsiderable in our just state of minds. We know Fight Club is a study of dual personalities, and let's face it because I think almost all people are familiar with the story or even seen it once or twice. Durden is everything that Norton's character isn't. He's the completer polar opposite; brave, tough, fit-abbed, egotistical, world-conscious and mouth-talky. Of course, Durden also gets the women while Norton's character doesn't. What Fight Club really pulls down its punches was in its final message that a man's worst enemy is one's self, but along the highway of men fighting each other, celebrating the glory of blood and open wounds, we just don't understand why it wanted to promote violence in the streets as if they were billboard ready to be ogled at.

Otherwise, it's a brilliant film. If you're definition of coolness is fighting, ass-kicking cinematography, quirky movie script, neurotic Edward Norton and the macho-mucho Brad Pitt punching some hooligans - then Webster would be really proud of you. I dig the line by Edward Norton, "This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time.", and Brad Pitt's "How much do you know about yourself when you haven't been into a fight?" - absolutely true addages. Anti-society and mayhem-incued it may be, but it's never anti-coolness.


Rating: B+