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Fight Club
20th Century Fox

9.2 based on 35 reviews Read critic reviews How did we calculate this? based on 143 votes Read user comments Rate this movie

FILM:

• Panic Room
• Seven
• The Game
• Zodiac

BOOKS:

• Rebels On The Backlot by Sharon Waxman

• Internet Movie Database
• View The Trailer
• Official Studio Site

MPAA 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.

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Chuck Palahniuk (novel) Jim Uhls
DIRECTED BY:	David Fincher
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: June 6, 2000  Video: April 25, 2000  Theatrical: October 15, 1999
RUNNING TIME:	139 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

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...

100

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.

100

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Fight Club -- cue the blurb machine -- is a knockout.

100

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.

100

TNT RoughCut Graham Verdon

Frighteningly intelligent and visually stunning film.

100

Film.com Gemma Files

It always surprises, never bores. It's also just damn good, on every possible level -- so go see it. Now.

100

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

A knockout...So feverish is Fight Club...that thermometer contact might make mercury shatter.

91

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.

90

Variety David Rooney

Bold, inventive, sustained adrenaline rush of a movie.

89

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Fight Club's dirty little secret is it's one of the best comedies of the decade.

88

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

It's a genuine shocker - a dazzler of a film - a hellishly funny picture.

88

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

It's the rawest, most hot-blooded, provocatively audacious, dangerous movie to come of out Hollywood this year.

80

Film.com Robert Horton

Never less than dazzling to look at, and the scorching humor keeps it alive from scene to scene.

80

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

A brilliantly realized series of sucker punches, a philosophical howl disguised as a muscular guy movie.

80

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

The sardonic, testosterone-fueled science fiction of Fight Club touches a raw nerve.

75

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.

75

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Begins with that invigoratingly nervy and imaginative buzz. But its chic indictment of empty materialist values fizzles.

75

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.

75

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

It's visually surrealistic, acted with integrity, so brutal in spots that I averted my eyes.

70

Time Richard Schickel

Both actors are excellent--but there's something conventionally gimmicky about the way it plays its reality/unreality game.

70

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.

66

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.

63

Baltimore Sun Ann Hornaday

Keeps filmgoers wondering what will happen next even as they are repulsed by what's happening in front of them.

63

USA Today Mike Clark

It's fun to talk about...but the price you pay is enduring its excesses and pummeled-home thematic points.

60

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.

60

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.

50

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.

50

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Grueling and bleak, but not unintelligent...although it's hardly groundbreaking just because everyone's face gets pulpy.

50

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.

50

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.

50

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.

50

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.

40

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

Fight Club is to intelligent men what Catherine Breillat's "Romance" is to intelligent women -- an insult.

40

Film.com Tom Keogh

This much-anticipated but terribly underwhelming black comedy represents a seriously squandered opportunity.

30

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.

25

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

If, as Fincher has said, this movie is supposed to be funny, then the joke's on us.

The average user rating for this movie is 9.2 (out of 10) based on 143 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Wesley T. gave it a10:
Fight Club is easily one of the greatest American films since The Godfather.

Ted K. gave it a4:
This movie is much too long and is never that entertaining to begin with. The premise is silly and if you find this stuff thought-provoking you need to get out more.

M H gave it a10:
A movie which explores the human psyche and travels into the uncharted territories of the mind, bringing (almost) everything into question but allowing the audience to pass judgement.

Casey? Br gave it a10:
Frist Anacho-Fascist is the wrong word. The movie is Nihilistic. Tyler Durden is the archtype of Nihilistic theroy. All Palanhiuk novels have at least one Nihilist character. The word you people are using is way wrong. Also the movie is often word for word from the greatest novel of the 1990s, including nearly all of the joke lines so insluting them is a slap in mulitple faces. The Flim is shot beautifully and acted very well so even if the consepts make you feel uncomfortible there is no excuse to give it lower than a 6 purely on those grounds. People that enjoyed this movie should read the book, it reads very fast and with seeing the movie first it will feel as though Edward Norton is talking in your head; that can't possibly be a bad thing.

InfamousButcher gave it a10:
Awesome is all can say, I've got nothing bad to say about it, its all awesome. It's a must watch.

Chris S. gave it a10:
It's a long shot to say this is the greatest movie ever made, but the argument can be made by anyone who sees it and truly gets it. I've never written a review for any film before, but even 9 years after its release, Fight Club has earned it. Violent, yes, of course. It's called Fight Club. But strangely enough, that's a misleading title. It's the most ambiguous fable ever, in that the moral is whatever you make it out to be. This movie solidified Edward Norton to me as a top-tier actor capable of sheer brilliance, and Brad Pitt is amazing as well, cool and scary and ridiculously funny with his red leather jacket. Which brings me to my next point, if you've heard the word "comedy" used in relation to Fight Club, you heard correctly. It points out the hilarious nature of society's individuals to try desperately to reach some form of perfection, but of course we know this is impossible. Almost every motif you could think of in a great satirical tale is present in Fight Club. The one I never hear people mention is addiction. (Society’s addiction with material things, Norton’s addiction to support groups, as well as the ideals of Pitt’s character, etc.) It also hints at the desire of people to destroy the beautiful things in their lives to achieve a sense of freedom, hence a portion of the Fight Club-ian philosophy. People are quick to assign a single "meaning" to this film (denouncing materialism), when in fact, there are dozens upon dozens of them. The presentation is superb in every way. Every camera angle, cut-scene, freeze-frame, and line of Norton's impeccable narration is done with searing precision. The film occasionally breaks the proverbial “fourth wall” similarly to Farris Bueller’s Day Off. There're even some interesting chemistry lessons presented, that noone can claim they weren't at least a little intrigued by. The plot is set up brilliantly, in a way I could not imagine trying to pull off myself. Chuck Palahniuk’s novel is transferred seamlessly to film like no movie has been able to do before. The movie itself plays out like a book, with that familiar sense of detachment as you read, even as you’re thoroughly engrossed by the characters’ angst. That metaphorical multi-layered effect is in full force. Nearly every scene tells you the story on three levels–what Norton thinks, what Helena Carter sees, and what Brad Pitt would have you believe. Everything you think is true in the movie is eligible to change by the end, even though you’re told a million times the simple truth. But the twist near the end isn’t for the sake of twist-dom, as many critics will tell you. This isn’t some forcefed, “you know the twist is coming, but you’re not sure how or when” sort of twist. It’s more like the Sixth Sense’s shocker where if you watch a second time, it’s so ridiculously obvious, but in a way that makes you appreciate the movie that much more. It’s a real twist that is set up throughout the film, and concretely supported at all times, despite countless accusations of the contrary. This film DOES NOT in any way glorify violence, nihilism, anarchism, or any other -ism that critics blame it for glorifying. Then again, it doesn’t denounce them either. That’s the beauty. . . You’re left to decide for yourself how to fit together the pieces and make a decision, from the extremes of totally hitting bottom, to total conformity, to everything in between. Most people won’t like the end, understand it, or even accept it as having happened, and that’s the price you pay to have the right ending sometimes. So it’s totally understandable for a large portion of viewers to see Fight Club as nothing but senseless pummeling and cheap MMA rip-off action adventure with a pointless psychological twist dripping with wannabe intellectual spittle. It will get its props one day. Every line is potentially quotable, every frame, and I mean every frame, is vital, and every word Norton speaks–in live action or narrated–is genius. Buy 2, maybe 3 copies of Fight Club, one to watch, one to keep as a collector’s item, and one to put in your time capsule for people of the future to know what the deal was in the late 90's/early millennium. The only movie I’d ever give 5 stars. PERFECTION.

Katie V. gave it a10:
This movie possibly suffers for its title. Fight Club is one of the most cynical and bitter expressions of the world. Yet, in a completly dark and disturbing way, it's beautiful.

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