Fight Club

Cult. Technically without hesitation (as it’s typical with Fincher), staying always one step ahead of the viewer, and always fun, original and solid. Maybe you’ll guess the twist, but even knowing it doesn’t affect the amazement at the ingenious deconstruction of the film space and the interpretive ambiguity. An excellent Norton and an equally good and inimitably cool Pitt. It’s impossible not to break the first rule – you don’t speak about Fight Club. 95% (11/05/2020)

I consider Fight Club to be the directorial peak of David Fincher's work. The film, based on a literary adaptation of the difficult-to-classify American writer Palahniuk, chose violence as its main theme. Some films have cult status, and some truly deserve it. These are the films that can be discussed for hours, that can provoke and that one can keep coming back to. The perfectly crafted screenplay of Fight Club and Fincher's directorial mastery helped create a film that can be seen for the second or third time, and it can even be argued that with knowledge of the twist and the film's plot, rewatching becomes more interesting. The film features some bizarre situations, quotes, and insane human types that would be a highlight of any psychiatric clinic. Helena Bonham Carter's character is a fateful woman with whom a significant part of the male audience would get involved even at the cost of entering the club. Fincher's film offers no solutions, and it is difficult, basically impossible, to evaluate from what political positions it arises. It can be embraced by an anarchist just as much as by an inherent authoritarian. An intellectual might consider it a cruel indictment of violence, just as much as its uncritical celebration. Those who want to can just have fun with the life story of a chronic insomniac and his comrades, while others can find inspiration for making explosives and saving the world. In any case, one's time spent with this film is not wasted. Overall impression: 95%. This film features excellent casting, with Edward Norton excelling, for whom the role had to be exceptionally mentally and physically demanding. It also had a decent budget, which allowed Fincher to play with a variety of scenes and enrich them with visual effects, so the viewer can see in a matter of seconds how an empty apartment fills with consumerist trivialities, an old abandoned house transforms into a terrorist base. Fight Club offers a whole range of similar shots. It is an interesting film from all angles, difficult to pigeonhole, which may or may not be liked by audiences, but it is difficult to remain indifferent to it... (24/01/2008)

The genius directing by David Fincher plays the main role in Fight Club, being able to keep up with the anarchically crazy literary manifestation by Palahniuk against the current lifestyle of western society. Someone else who contributed a lot toward the excellent result was Jim Uhls, who adapted the book into a screenplay that could be used to make a movie. Unarguably, the book is a stronger experience, but the movie also has much to offer, thanks to the actors, the technical side and, primarily, Fincher’s playfulness. On the other hand, the original book isn’t one of the best things ever to have trickled out of Palahniuk’s sick mind. (16/03/2022)

This is the richest interpretive film I know. Is it a critique of consumerism, a satire on the far-right and anarchist associations at the same time, or just a provocative thriller about the need for violence? Maybe all of it. In any case, it takes a good bit of genius to make it not look, through its shiny facade, like an angry young generation that wants to save the world with rocks in their hands, but rather like a serious ancient philosopher who has it all figured out to the last detail. It was a breakthrough life film for when I was in my 20s, and a decade later it’s (only) a fantastic cinematic ride without compromises, reflecting the end of the 1990s like few other things. (21/11/2008)

At the age of eighteen, when I was angry at the system and I liked the Doors (the band) and Pulp Fiction, Fight Club would have been the movie of my life. But today, I don’t think I could be a movie star even if I really wanted to and did everything necessary to achieve that. And I've learned to get by in the system. Which is sufficient reason for me to think of this movie as just very spectacularly filmed bullshit. (23/02/2003)