Skip to content
Dan Owen reviews
- Cert:
- Cat.no: 1425 DVD
- Running time: 133 minutes
- Year: 1999
- Pressing: 2000
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 36 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English
- Widescreen: 2.40:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: 2 * DVD 9
- Price: £24.99
- Extras: Commentary with David Fincher, Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and HelenaBonham Carter, behind-the-scenes vignettes with multiple-angles/commentary,music video, deleted/alternate scenes, storyboards, publicity material, conceptart, theatrical trailers, cast and crew biographies, Edward Norton interview,and internet/TV spots.
Director:
- David Fincher
Producers:
- Arnon Milchan, Art Linson, Cean Chaffin, & Ross Grayson Bell
Screenplay:
- Jim Uhls
Music:
- The Dust Brothers
Director Of Photography:
- Jeff Cronenweth
Editor:
- James Haygood
Cast:
- Tyler Durden: Brad Pitt
Jack: Edward Norton
Marla Singer: Helena Bonham Carter
Bob: Meat Loaf
Angelface: Jared Leto
Jack is a chronic insomniacwho visits support groups as a way to feelaccepted and loved. Jack later meets soap salesman Tyler Durden, acharismatic young man with a twisted philosophy on life that seems to makesense to Jack. Finding a mutual bond with each other, they soon create‘Fight Club’; underground illegal brawls between disenchanted modern men…
David Fincher puts the ghost ofAlien 3to rest once and for all with histhird successive masterpiece in a row. After the critical and commercialsuccess ofSe7enand – to a lesser degreeThe Game,comes Fight Club -easily his most entertaining and thought-provoking movie yet.
Fincher’s mastery of visual storytelling reaches its apex with this movie.From the opening credits the movie screams quality with a thumping technotrack and one of the most original camera pullbacks in cinema – literallytravelling from inside Norton’s brain, out his mouth, and down the barrellof a gun. The quirky visuals come thick and fast, with roving camerawhizzing down skyscrapers to underground parking lots, to slow-motionapartment explosions and a frighteningly realistic plane crash! Fincher isin total control of the narrative, using the excellent actors assembled toinhabit his cold, cynical, world of anti-consumerism.
Brad Pitt again proves more than adept at creating quirky and compellingcharacters that somehow reek of coolness despite thei dodgy fashion senses,and Edward Norton anxious urban insomniac gives the relatively fledglingactor another tour-de-force performance to add to his filmography. Norton’smonotone voice-over grounds the movie very effectively, and has alreadybecome one of *the* best and most recognized uses of voice-over in a film.
Helena Bonham Carter manages to ditch her Merchant Ivory origins once andfor all, with not a shred of period clothing in sight, and breathes lifeinto the chain-smoking bitchy Marla Singer. Even Meat Loaf, yes *Meat Loaf*,does a memorable turn as obese female-breasted Bob (don’t ask!).
The script by Jim Uhls, that perfectly captures Chuck Palahnuck’s novel, isa wonderful adapatation and the film rockets along at a glorious pace, butnever rushes thing. Events builds, characters develop, the plot thickens,tension mounts, and a blistering twist is revealed… all expertly timed andweaved into the fabric of Fincher’s visuals.
Fight Club is a definite case of having a good director, good script, andgood cast. You can’t go wrong. Each of the three winning elements feeds offthe other, meaning the film is solid and classic material from the openingscene. The Dust Brothers‘ score is also a bonus – giving the film adistintive musical style that’s unlike conventional scoring by moviecomposers.
Overall, the film contains so many truly memorable moments, andthought-provoking dialgoue, it’s hard to dislike. The warped viewpoints ofTyler Durden kind of makes sense, and so Fight Club becomes much more thanjust a movie – it’s almost a lesson. The film brilliantly sums up thingsmost twentysomethings have contemplated or thought about themselves in thepast – the oversaturation of the media, of products, of advertising, socialexpectations, the youth’s role in this society seemingly without a purposeor goal…
Some critics thought the film loses it footing after the initial fight clubbouts, when the film moves into its full-on anarchic mode. Well, uh, that’scalled *development*, everyone. I personally didn’t have a problem at all,and enjoyed the blackly comic veins the movie tapped in its latter third.
If you haven’t seen Fight Club, what are you waiting for? Anyone whoenjoys movies should have seen this by now, so do yourself a favour and seekit out on DVD. Then wonder why films likeStar Wars: Episode Inabbed all the glory in 1999…
(DVDfever Ed: Just a shame that four seconds of the film hasbeen censored and replaced with alternative footage for those brief moments)
Let’s just get this over with right away – the 2-disc Fight Club Region 2DVD box-case is, quite simply, the *best* of its kind yet released! It’sabsolutely fantastic, and the depth of Extra Features is astounding. You’llbe literally stooped in Fight Club over a whole weekend going through thisDVD properly!
The DVD set comes in a fabulous mock-packaged sleeve, that contains theactual case itself. The inner cardboard case folds out to reveal the twoDVDs on their plastic seating (one contains the film, the other the extras).There is also a humorous boolet included in a sleeve entitled ‘How To StartA Fight’, which is an added bonus.
The artwork on the packaging (exterior *and* interior) as well as on theDVD covers is fantastic and completely inkeeping with the tone and look ofthe movie. Quite simply, this is the best DVD packaging I’ve yet to see. Andit doesn’t stop there – the DVD Extras are:
The depth of selection available is fantastic, and it will take you aboutan hour to navigate this section of the DVD. Put simply, if you want toknow about how Fight Club was made, look no further!
Some of the scenes here also have selectable angles, but as with mostdeleted scenes, they were deleted for good reason! But one or two areworthwhile to see.
The trailers are excellent, and the bonus unused trailer very welcome. ThePublic Service Announcements, used as quasi-ads in US theaters are veryfunny and original, the music video is fantastic, the artwork is good, thepress-kit is interesting, the stills are okay, the transcript isinformative but actual video footage would have been better. But,altogether, another winning section of Extras!
Another impressive section of Extras – the volume of artwork is staggeringand already you feel like *you* were the one who made thismovie!
As you can no doubt tell, Fight Club has superb extras, literallydripping with added goodies once you’ve watched the film. In fact, wadingthrough the extras on offer will probably take longer than watching thefilm! It’s much appreciated that David Fincher decided to personally spend sometime with 20th Century Fox to make the DVD release worthwhile – because itis.
More than that, this still ranks as one of *the* best DVDs you can ownin terms of film content, packaging and extras.Buy this *now*!
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.