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Fight Club

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 35 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 172 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by:
Chuck Palahniuk (novel)
Jim Uhls
Directed by: David Fincher
Release Date:
Theatrical: October 15, 1999
DVD: June 6, 2000
Running Time: 139 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for disturbing and graphic depiction of violent anti-social behavior, sexuality and language
Starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf, and Jared Leto
The film's narrator (Norton) attends support groups of all kinds as a way to "experience" something within his unfeeling, commercial existence. On a business trip, he meets Tyler Durden (Pitt) who encourages them to form a fight club as a release for their latent aggressive tendencies.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Panic Room Seven The Game Zodiac
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham
Delivers a sucker punch to the audience and then pulls the rug out from under it. It is sensational. It is also grimly funny.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Fight Club -- cue the blurb machine -- is a knockout.
Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Pulls you in, challenges your prejudices, rocks your world and leaves you laughing in the face of an abyss. It's alive, all right. It's also an uncompromising American classic.
TNT RoughCut Graham Verdon
Frighteningly intelligent and visually stunning film.
Film.com Gemma Files
It always surprises, never bores. It's also just damn good, on every possible level -- so go see it. Now.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
A knockout...So feverish is Fight Club...that thermometer contact might make mercury shatter.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak
It assaults us with violence, brutality, sexual confusion and anarchy and has enough bruising, punishing humor to keep us laughing with relief.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Fight Club's dirty little secret is it's one of the best comedies of the decade.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
It's a genuine shocker - a dazzler of a film - a hellishly funny picture.
San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris
It's the rawest, most hot-blooded, provocatively audacious, dangerous movie to come of out Hollywood this year.
Read Full Review >Film.com Robert Horton
Never less than dazzling to look at, and the scorching humor keeps it alive from scene to scene.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
A brilliantly realized series of sucker punches, a philosophical howl disguised as a muscular guy movie.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Elvis Mitchell
The sardonic, testosterone-fueled science fiction of Fight Club touches a raw nerve.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
As a piece of storytelling, Fight Club is a bit of a dud: It's a good 15 minutes too long, and the tension doesn't build the way you wish it would.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Jay Carr
Begins with that invigoratingly nervy and imaginative buzz. But its chic indictment of empty materialist values fizzles.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Fight Club badly wants to be "A Clockwork Orange" for the millennium - and succeeds to a surprising extent until director David Fincher ends up sucker-punching the audience.
Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
It's visually surrealistic, acted with integrity, so brutal in spots that I averted my eyes.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Schickel
Both actors are excellent--but there's something conventionally gimmicky about the way it plays its reality/unreality game.
Washington Post Stephen Hunter
A provocative experience that lights you up even as it brutalizes you. And I don't even like Brad Pitt very much.
Read Full Review >Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson
Despite terrific comic acting...and an atomic first hour, Fight Club makes a few wrong turns and ends up lost itself.
Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday
Keeps filmgoers wondering what will happen next even as they are repulsed by what's happening in front of them.
USA Today Mike Clark
It's fun to talk about...but the price you pay is enduring its excesses and pummeled-home thematic points.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
The most incendiary movie to come out of Hollywood in a long time. It's a mess, but one worth fighting about.
LA Weekly Manohla Dargis
On a purely visual level, it's the most powerful and viscerally exciting movie to come out of Hollywood this year. Which doesn't mean that it's all good.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
This malevolently gleeful satire...is extremely funny, surprisingly well- acted, and boldly designed...at least until its steel-and-chrome soufflé falls apart.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
Grueling and bleak, but not unintelligent...although it's hardly groundbreaking just because everyone's face gets pulpy.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Undermines its serious undertones with an avalanche of smirky cynicism designed to flatter the hipper-than-thou fantasies of adolescent moviegoers.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
But imagination and energy are often not enough. On balance, this is the dumbest of the entries in Hollywood's anti-consumerist new wave.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
This exercise in mainstream masochism, macho posturing, and designer-grunge fascism is borderline ridiculous. But it also happens to be David Fincher's richest movie.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
But the second act is pandering and the third is trickery, and whatever Fincher thinks the message is, that's not what most audience members will get.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf
Fight Club is to intelligent men what Catherine Breillat's "Romance" is to intelligent women -- an insult.
Read Full Review >Film.com Tom Keogh
This much-anticipated but terribly underwhelming black comedy represents a seriously squandered opportunity.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
What's most troubling about this witless mishmash of whiny, infantile philosophizing and bone-crunching violence is the increasing realization that it actually thinks it's saying something of significance.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
If, as Fincher has said, this movie is supposed to be funny, then the joke's on us.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 9.3 (out of 10) based on 172 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Jordan H. gave it a10:
This movie was about far more than fighting and causing chaos. it was also about how people can't live up to their own standards and how is this not a deep film? i guess if you are a stoner all you would think was hey cool fighting but if you have half a brain youll look into the deeper meaning.
Luke D. gave it a10:
Amazing, Fight Club is just one big intense ride that will take you to places that will blow your mind and dustrub you from start to finish.
Steven V. gave it a10:
Fight Club is an astonishingly original idea. Im glad the movie did the book justice. Its obviously one of those movies where if you don't get it, you don't get it. I've heard too many people asking why they fought each other. Those people obviously missed the point. These people probably prefer lighter fair like Bio Dome.
amethyst s gave it an8:
A brilliant movie... that is what it is. every aspect of the movie is dealt with utmost precision. the mental dilemma of each of the characters is clearly defined. it is a movie with a prescription to see once more. still wondering why the movie is not favorably rated.
Fraser M gave it a3:
I watched Fight Club today. I personally thought that it was a jumble of half-imagined characters and absurd, adolescent philosophy. The twist was predictable and, frankly, somewhat menial. It has been done before, and the film in general has been done before. It is like a dumb, testosterone-feulled action film that thinks it is intelligent. Ed Norton, you have let me down.
Alberto A gave it a10:
Perhaps the greatest film of our generation, without a doubt Fincher's best work, and Pitt's legacy.
Michael C gave it an8:
This movie leaves very little to be desired. The mind-bending double personality aspect of it, while entertaining and mildly frightening, leaves one aspect tough to understand: which Durden was where at any given time? It was never fully explained, and it was a bit annoying to turn off the movie thinking "Wait, which one was in that one scene then?" If they had gone to lengths to explain this, it would have been a better film. Still, it's an amazing featuring of Pitt, Norton, and Carter's amazing acting.
