Fight Club (1999) Rated:  R  Starring: Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf, Zach Grenier, Richmond Arquette, David Andrews, George Maguire, Eugenie Bondurant, Jared Leto . Director: David Fincher Genre: Drama DVD Release Date: 11/17/2009 Tagline: Mischief. Mayhem. Soap. Directed by Oscar Nominee David Fincher this "darkest of dark satires" (Newsweek) is "an uncompromising American classic" (Rolling Stone) starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. Norton gives a riveting performance as a label-obsessed insomniac on the verge of going postal. Befriending a scummy soap salesman (Pitt), he embarks on an existential crusade that takes them both to the brutal, raw heights of their manhood. Also starring Helena Bonham Carter as they sexy psycho who comes between them, Fight Club is a "bold, inventive, sustained adrenaline rush of a movie" (Variety) that may leave you feeling bruised and bloodied...but also invigorated and alive. Storyline: A ticking-time-bomb insomniac and a slippery soap salesman channel primal male aggression into a shocking new form of therapy. Their concept catches on, with underground "fight clubs" forming in every town, until an eccentric gets in the way and ignites an out-of-control spiral toward oblivion. Written by Anonymous Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Casey Broadwater on November 16, 2009 -- In the decade that's elapsed since Fight Club first pummeled audiences and divided critics, many of the film's themes have remained remarkably pertinent. Despite a massive recession, consumer culture is still the driving force of the economy. We're still, as übermensch anti-hero Tyler Durden would put it, "the bi-products of a lifestyle obsession." Cognitively preprogrammed for brand awareness and mass acceptance of corporate advertising, we are our iPods, our hybrid cars, our trendy neighborhoods and 500 channels of high definition television. The rise and dispersion of so- called metro-sexuality has challenged and redefined traditional notions of masculinity. And, of course, the almost unfathomable events of September 11, 2001 have eerily echoed the film's explosive dénouement. As much as Fight Club is a cultural touchstone of late-1990s, pre- Y2K America, it's still as relevant as the morning paper, as potent as bull shark testosterone. The films needs little introduction, but for those who might've spent the past ten years in a cave or holed up in some mountaintop monastery, I'll lay out the fundamentals. Based on a novel by shock-scribe Chuck Palahniuk (Choke) and directed by David Fincher (Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Fight Club is an existential thriller that examines the emasculated place of men—not mankind, but men—on the eve of the 21st century. When the film opens, our unnamed narrator—who occasionally refers to himself as Jack (Edward Norton)—has his mouth wrapped around the barrel of a pistol, the first of the film's many sexually suggestive symbols. At the other end of the gun is Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a man who has abandoned material pursuits and found himself enlightened by violence. We flash back to the beginning. Jack—a stand-in name for our heroic Everyman—is a corporate numbers drone, a risk management assessor for a major automobile manufacturer. His life is defined by his Ikea-furnished lifestyle solutions, by his khakis, his dinner plates, by the monotony of his insomniac's existence. To combat his sleeplessness, he begins attending random support groups—for everything from testicular cancer to sickle cell anemia— where he meets Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), a "faker" who lives like she might die any moment. ("The tragedy, she says, is that she didn't.") After a massive explosion mysteriously destroys his condo, Jack moves in with Tyler Durden, the unfettered id to Jack's cautious super- ego. Tyler makes soap from liposuction fat—he "sells women their own fat asses"—and regularly expresses variations of the credo that "it's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything." Together, the two start the titular fight club, a place where men can go to strip themselves of societal expectations and, for a few bloody moments in the ring, experience true glory and self-worth. In time, Tyler recruits members of the club to be part of "Project Mayhem," a terrorist cell-cum-practical joke squad rooted in a kind of anarcho-fascist-nihilism. Obviously, this escalates way out of hand, and Jack has to confront both Tyler and his own fractured and conflicted thoughts about everything that's happening. Early reviews of the film were polarized. Some critics championed Fight Club's breakneck visual acumen and dark-as-a-black-eye comedy. Others saw nothing funny in a post-MTV mishmash of styles that seemingly glorifies violence. Some praised the sharp-tongued verbal acuity of its script and the braveness of the film's no-holds-barred nihilism. And still others disparaged Tyler Durden's empty philosophizing as juvenile, a pop-neo-facism for violence-prone teens too immature to realize that, despite all the cool posturing and profound-sounding quips, Durden's solutions to the problems of modern masculinity are far more troubling than the problems themselves. Pro and con, all of these arguments hold up today, as the film has been blindly admired, dismissively vilified, and frequently misunderstood for a decade now. Take frat- boys, for example. Fight Club posters are—or were, when I was in college—almost as ubiquitous in dorm halls as spent beer bottles. One wonders…are the macho, fist-pumping, high- fiving hangers of these posters—who are, in essence, partly defining their identities through a professed admiration of Fight Club—aware, at all, of the film's latent homoeroticism? It's an apparent contradiction that I imagine provocateur Sasha Baron Cohen might have explored in some parallel-universe version of Brüno. Whether you think Fight Club is the most stylish thriller of the 1990s or just a husk of pseudo-philosophy wrapped around an empty core—I'm somewhere in the middle—the film is undeniably well-produced. David Fincher evolves his visual style from The Game and Seven to form a gritty, industrial aesthetic, with stripped down colors and deconstructed set design. The cinematography is stylized and evocative, the camera movements assured and occasionally glitzy, but always in service of the film's wink-wink ironic detachment, and never to simply draw attention to itself. But the real highlight here is the acting. Edward Norton is alternately frazzled and incredulous; when he finally strips off his Oxford button-down and gets into the ring, he's like a man reborn. When he returns to work the next day, thoroughly disheveled, it's as if what was once a stuffed shirt, going through a humdrum routine, has been replaced by a walking smirk, a badass with unhindered self-confidence. Brad Pitt is simply unpredictable—you never know what he'll do next—and he handles his often viciously sarcastic dialogue with effortless cool. And Helena Bonham Carter, who can imagine her in a Merchant Ivory film after seeing Fight Club? Her Marla is the personification of wanton, uninhibited sex and belligerent neurosis. The script is tightly written, the editing is brisk and playful, and the action is brutal. Is the violence condemned or condoned? Is it gratuitous or essential to the film's polemic? Ultimately, if Tyler Durden is the out-of-control id and Jack's former life represents the restraint of the socially conscious super-ego, then I think that we, the audience, must serve as the ego, finding the compromise between the dichotomies and arriving—ourselves—at whatever balance can be obtained between the emasculation of materialism and the skull-crushing, bone-breaking self-annihilation presented in Fight Club. The question always arises, in cases like this, of whether it's worth it to upgrade from the DVD release of a catalog title. In the case of Fight Club, I'd say yes, with few reservations. There's not much in the way of new supplementary material, but with a visual boost in clarity and a sonic pummeling—courtesy of a lossless audio track—this Blu-ray release of Fight Club is a heavy hitter, and a must-have for fans. Highly recommended. Trivia: The reverse-tracking shot out of the trash can, an elaborate digitally animated sequence, was the very last shot to be added to the film. It required so much processing time that it almost had to be spliced in "wet" - i.e., fresh from the lab - so that the film could be duplicated on schedule. Due to the amount of reflective surfaces in the shot, it took almost 8 hours to render a single frame. The entire shot took 3 weeks to render. Author Chuck Palahniuk has stated that he found the film to be an improvement on his novel. In the short scene when Brad Pitt and Edward Norton are drunk and hitting golf balls, they really are drunk, and the golf balls are sailing directly into the side of the catering truck. The typeface used for the titles and logo is named "Fight This". Starbucks pulled their name from the coffee shop destruction scene. They didn't mind the director placing their product throughout the film, but did not want their name to be destroyed in that scene. Therefore, the gold globe crashes into a shop named Gratifico Coffee. Edward Norton lost 17-20 pounds for this role after having to beef up tremendously for his role as a Neo-Nazi skinhead in American History X. Norton achieved this form by running, taking vitamins and just ignoring the on-set catering. The sex scene between Tyler (Brad Pitt) and Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) was shot using the same 'bullet-time' technique used in The Matrix; stills cameras were set up in a circle around the bed, and each one would take a single shot in sequence. These single frames were then edited together and enhanced with CG, as both Pitt and Bonham Carter were fully clothed in motion capture suits during the shoot. Voted #4 in Total Film's 100 Greatest Movies Of All Time list (November 2005). During the shooting of the sex scene, actors Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter posed in 10 different positions from the Kama Sutra. Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter spent three days recording orgasmic sounds for their unseen sex scenes. When Tyler (Brad Pitt) catches The Narrator (Edward Norton) listening at the door as he has sex with Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), he is wearing a rubber glove. This was Brad Pitt's idea, and caused a great deal of controversy with President of Production at Fox 2000 Pictures, Laura Ziskin. She was horrified when she saw the scene and demanded that it be removed. However at a subsequent test screening, the appearance of the glove got the biggest laugh of the whole movie, prompting Ziskin to change her mind. The shot surveying Project Mayhem's destructive equipment lying in underground parking lots was a three-dimensional composition of over 100 photographs of Los Angeles and Century City by special effects photographer Michael Douglas Middleton. To ensure that Bob's (Meat Loaf) breasts and love handles hung correctly, his fat suit was filled with birdseed, so that it would 'spill' over his pants and give the impression of sagging flesh. Altogether, the suit plus the seed weighed over one hundred pounds. Make up artist Rob Bottin had to build two different fat suits for Meat Loaf - one with nipples, one without - because the filmmakers weren't sure if 20th Century Fox would approve the suit with the prominent nipples. Brad Pitt and Edward Norton both really learned how to make soap. Brad Pitt says he didn't want his parents to see the movie, but he couldn't convince them not to watch. They changed their minds after watching the chemical burn scene. In the original cut of the film, several specific brands were referenced. Besides the coffee bar (originally a Starbucks Coffee) and the video store (originally a Blockbuster Video) at the receiving end of Project Mayhem, the Narrator clearly referenced Reader's Digest (later changed to the fictional magazine "The Annotated Reader") and specifically referred to the Reader's Digest stories about Joe's body that were written by J.T. Ratcliffe. These product placements were removed at the request of these companies, whose executives did not want such product placements in light of the film's content. This entailed re-recording the Narrator's dialogue to change the character's anatomical references from "Joe" to "Jack." ------------ Cast Notes: Edward Norton (The Narrator), Brad Pitt (Tyler Durden), Helena Bonham Carter (Marla Singer), Meat Loaf (Robert 'Bob' Paulson [as Meat Loaf Aday]), Zach Grenier (Richard Chesler), Richmond Arquette (Intern), David Andrews (Thomas), George Maguire (Group Leader), Eugenie Bondurant (Weeping Woman), Christina Cabot (Group Leader), Sydney 'Big Dawg' Colston (Speaker), Rachel Singer (Chloe), Christie Cronenweth (Airline Attendant), Tim De Zarn (Inspector Bird [as Tim de Zarn]), Ezra Buzzington (Inspector Dent). IMDb Rating (09/06/13): 8.9/10 from 783,910 users Top 250: #10 IMDb Rating (10/15/07): 8.6/10 from 215,283 users Top 250: #28 IMDb Rating (06/01/01): 8.5/10 from 27,288 users Top 250: #37 Additional information Copyright:  1999,  20th Century Fox Features:  The bulk of the bonus features here are identical to those on the 2-disc special edition DVD, but there are few additions to sweeten the deal, including an interactive audio featurette, an acceptance speech at Spike TV's 2009 Guys Choice Awards, and a searchable index of commentary topics and in-movie references. Commentary Tracks How many films arrive with four commentaries on a single disc? As owners of the 2-disc special edition DVD know, these tracks are a veritable treasure trove of arcane Fight Club knowledge, from making-of production details and on-set anecdotes to character analysis, script dissection, and directorial decision-making. David Fincher provides an excellent stand-alone track, and he's joined in the second commentary by Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter for even more lively discussion. Author Chuck Palahniuk and screenwriter Jim Uhls provide the perspectives of the film's progenitors for the third track, and the fourth is a collaborative effort from DP Jeff Cronenweth, Costume Designer Michael Kaplan, Production Designer Alex McDowell, Visual Effects Supervisor Kevin Haug, and Visual Effects Editor Doc Bailey. All of the tracks are worth listening to, but the sheer amount of content can be overwhelming. Which leads us to: Insomniac Mode: I am Jack's Search Index Essentially, this mode has two functions. First up is a "topic search," which allows you to scroll through an index of people, places, and things referenced in both the movie and in the special features, from "Abraham Lincoln" to "Zach Grenier." Selecting one of these topics will take you to either the point in the film where it's referenced, or to the appropriate featurette in the special features. It's a neat inclusion, but I can't see myself using it, as I'm more likely to simply plow through the bonus features one after another. More useful, though, is the "commentary guide," which, when activated during the film, engages a pop-up menu that allows you to see, in "real time," what topics are being discussed in each of the four commentary tracks. This lets you switch at will between the commentaries and listen only to topics that interest you. A Hit in the Ear: Ren Klyce and the Sound Design of Fight Club (1080p) Sound designer Ren Klyce explains, in a brief intro to this interactive feature, how sound can "define a film's dramatic and psychological landscape." After viewing the introduction, you can select one of four scenes and remix the audio yourself, manipulating both the realistic and expressionistic audio elements that make up each scene. Basically, you can change the overall volume coming from each speaker of a 5.1 setup, as well as adjust the balance between the "real" sound effects and the more impressionist flourishes of sound design. It's not incredibly intuitive, but audiophiles may have fun tooling around here for a few minutes. It's self- explanatory, but you do need a 5.1 speaker arrangement to make full use of this feature. Flogging Fight Club (1080i, 9:58) Here, Mel Gibson rides in on a horse—wearing a Viking helmet—to bestow the Guy Movie Hall of Fame honor to Fight Club at Spike TV's 2009 Guys Choice Awards. We also get to see David Fincher, Brad Pitt, and Edward Norton prepping for their acceptance speech, which largely consists of bashing the critics who initially bashed the film. Behind the Scenes Vignettes (SD) The 16 or so behind-the-scenes clips here are divided into three sections: Production, Visual Effects, and On Location. With the exception of On Location, which is a stand-alone look at some of the film's props and choreography, the rest of the clips are somewhat cumbersomely arranged. First, you have to select a segment to view, and then select an angle and an audio track. You can also change the angles and audio tracks—there are one to three, tops, per clip—by pressing the respective buttons on your remote. To be honest, I would prefer one big, long production documentary. Deleted and Alternate Scenes (SD, approx. 16 min.) There are seven severed or altered scenes, most of which were cut for pacing or trimmed of objectionable material. Publicity Material (SD, approx. 30 min.) Includes three trailers, 17 TV spots, 5 internet spots, 2 hilarious public service announcements, a music video, and the transcript of an interview with Edward Norton. There are also three self- playing galleries here, one each for lobby cards, press kit materials, and stills. Art Gallery (1080p, approx. 30 min.) Here you'll find high definition, self-playing galleries of visual effects stills, photos of the Paper Street house, costumes and makeup, pre-production paintings, the "brain ride" map, and all of the storyboards for the film. Subtitles:  English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Mandarin (Simplified), Norwegian, Swedish Video:  Widescreen 2.40:1 Color Screen Resolution: 1080p Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1 Audio:  ENGLISH: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit) FRENCH: DTS 5.1 PORTUGUESE: Dolby Digital 5.1 SPANISH: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 KBPS) ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 2.0 (224 KBPS) Time:  2:19 DVD:  # Discs: 1 -- # Shows: 1 UPC:  024543617907 Coding:  [V4.5-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC D-Box:  Yes Other:  Producers: Cean Chaffin, Art Linson, Ross Grayson Bell; Directors: David Fincher; running time of 139 minutes; Packaging: HD. Rated R for disturbing and graphic depiction of violent anti-social behavior, sexuality and language.