American Psycho

• Cert:
• Cat.no: EDV 9070
• Running time: 98 minutes
• Year: 2000
• Pressing: 2000
• Region(s): 2, PAL
• Chapters: 20 plus extras
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
• Languages: English
• Subtitles: None
• Widescreen: 2.35:1
• 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
• Macrovision: Yes
• Disc Format: DVD 9
• Price: £19.99
• Extras: Deleted Scenes, On Set Interviews, Killer Looks – The Fashions of American Psycho, Trailer, Interactive menus, Scene access

Director:

Mary Harron

Cast:

Patrick Bateman: Christian Bale
Evelyn Williams: Reese Witherspoon
Jean: Chloe Sevigny
Donald Kimball: Willem Dafoe
Paul Allen: Jared Leto
Courtney Rawlinson: Samantha Mathis

By day, Patrick Bateman (a tour-de-force from Bale) is a dapper young Wall Street businessman living in a world of luxury and style. It’s a heartless existence, however, underscored with a ruthless desire to be the best and a rampant avarice… even between co-workers.

In a social circle of wealthy, upstate accountants – where status is reflected in the cut of your clothes, the style of your business card, and the restaurants where you can get a last-minute table – Bateman faces a daily battle with his associates and peers to remain one step ahead in this utterly selfish moral vacuum. Projected image is everything, self-fulfillment the ultimate goal at all times.

Out of office hours, it’s a different story for Bateman. Behind the cool veneer, and carefully airbrushed exterior, lurks an extremely disturbed mind.

Author Brett Easton Ellis’ notoriously graphic novel set among the decadence of late 80s New York was bound to cause a stir when it finally arrived on the big screen.

Murder, mutilation, cannibalism and homophobia – even in these post-Tarantino times, such material is not exactly movie-friendly. Step forward the partnership of Mary Harron (director) and Guinevere Turner (screenplay writer) for the audacious task of turning American Psycho from unfilmable book to watchable cinema.

That two women should want to be involved with the project surprised many, since much of the violence in Ellis’ prose is directed at the female of the species, often in unsparing detail. In fact, though this is indeed the case, it’s the fairer sex who contribute to central character Patrick Bateman’s perceived psychological humiliation and impotence. They are financially independent, and sexually confident – a mix which only serves to heighten the sense of powerlessness that drives Bateman ever further into his mysoginistic fantasy world.

A narcissistic, obsessive character, Bateman’s impeccably arranged and luxurious lifestyle is methodically laid out before us. Extreme vanity infuses his regimental health and fitness routines, as he takes an evangelical enthusiasm in the preening and grooming.

Bateman’s dispassionate yet reverential diatribes on his beloved AOR music (such as Huey Lewis, Phil Collins and Whitney Houston), that plays in the background as he acts out some truly revolting deeds, adds a twisted stroke of caustic satire. It’s a motif that is perhaps repeated at least once too often in the film, but the contrast still evokes the necessary atmosphere of detached, calculated evil.

American Psycho is a character study within a darkly humurous satire of the go-getting Yuppie generation that reached its apex in the latter half of the Eighties. Inflating every aspect to an almost comical level, it witheringly portrays the shallow greed and spiritual bankruptcy while exposing these loathsome caricatures hell-bent on personal gain.

Admittedly, there is nothing particularly new or original about such *revelations*, yet the film uses Bateman’s deteriorated mental state as the perspective from which the audience sees his wretched world. The mask of sanity is never far from slipping completely, as monotonous and clinical reality begins to blur with wildly horrific fantasy. How much of what appears to happen actually does take place and how much is imagined by Bateman, becomes the pivotal feature of American Psycho.

In comparison to the novel, Harron’s film adaptation has been accused of fudging this central conceit. The movie’s ambiguity is such that it can be read several ways depending on how the clues throughout the film are interpreted. For some, the final pay-off will come as no surprise while for others the conclusion might seem insubstantial, even to the extent of rendering American Psycho an inconsequential waste of time.

The disc is yet another EiV title that isn’t of the highest quality in terms of presentation. The 20 chapters are just about decent for a 98-minute film, but as ever there are no subtitles and the picture is merely okay.

Some deleted scenes are presented without context or comments from the film-makers and the interview footage sounds as though it was recorded in a broom cupboard. Listening to one of the stars trying to make himself audible over the din of on-set construction begs the question, why not talk someplace quieter?

“Killer Looks”, meanwhile, is another fuzzily-shot behind-the-scenes featurette focusing on the clothes and fashion which is such a part of American Psycho.

There are more than 300 viewer comments about this film on the Internet Movie Database, virtually all of them strongly against or in favour of the end product for a variety of reasons. Disappointment, outrage, boredom, disgust, enthusiastic praise (usually “the best movie I’ve ever seen!”) colours each reaction. This is clearly not a film that engenders indifference. So, who to believe? The choice is yours.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some videotapes to return….

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