Fight Club

The Good: With enough twists and turns to leave you with some serious chiropractic bills, this film will keep you guessing and on the edge of your seat.
The Bad: Realizing that it takes a certain level of craziness to reach their level of toughness.
The Bottom Line: Get ready to #$%^ somebody up.

Here's how I'd see a fight between Chuck Norris and Brad Pitt (star of Fight Club) going:
Round 1 - bell rings, Chuck throws a full looping roundhouse kick. Brad takes it full force, turns back and laughs evilly at Chuck. Chuck soils himself. Pitt proceeds to beat "Nancy Boy" Norris into a bloody pulp while Chuck attempts to ball up in the corner, rock back and forth, and cry. Pitt ignores Norris' yelps for mercy and ends the bludgeoning by hammer-throwing Chuck into the nearest house light, lighting up the arena in a blast of sparks. This textbook massacre could only be provided by a true badass in one of the most jacked up movies ever: Fight Club.

"The first rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club. The second rule of fight club is you DON'T talk about fight club. The third rule of fight club is when someone says "stop" or goes limp, the fight is over. Fourth rule is only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule - one fight at a time fellas. Sixth rule - no shirts, no shoes. Seventh rule fights go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule -- if this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight."

David Fincher's cinematic adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's breakthrough 1996 novel highlights what it takes to really live. Through a progression of the narrator's battle with insomnia, the movie chronicles different coping mechanisms, such as buying Ikea's entire catalogue to attending every support group in New York. The mechanism that ends up working for Ed Norton's character is the film's namesake, started by both Ed and a friend he met on the plane (Brad Pitt - Tyler Durden). After losing all of his worldly possessions when his condo mysteriously explodes, Norton calls to stay with Durden, and a esoteric, barbaric, and massochistic bloodbath ensues.

In this manliest of movies, there are several scenes that make you writhe with either bloodlust or disgust (stereotypically based on your gender). There is more than one scene where the character absolutely physically demolishes themselves in order to gain their respective wishes. This ends up being a tale of sacrifice, dedication, inner struggle, obsession, and the chorus of the hymn of Men in modern America. There is something primal and vital to the American that Palahniuk relates about the inner struggle with life as most know it - as Durden emotes in the film:

"Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables: slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man, No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war...our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning the fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

Now, there is a big part of me that when I hear those words, I want to say "f*ck yeah!" and sign on the dotted line. If there's no part of you that doesn't feel this way, it may not be the movie for you, because this is only a glimpse into the genre of attitude marketed by this film. It is a recruitment of sorts, and spawned a generation of t-shirts, video games, spin-offs, quotes, and mottos for the American male.

What's more is that Palahniuk continues with his assertions and attempts to propel the notion that there is something wondrous in war - not only the glory, but the presence; the shear reminder that your manlihood is intact, ferocious, and when the right switches flip, anyone can let out their inner beast. This is comforting to me, for the strangest reasons that I couldn't begin to describe, but if you'll remember, I told you there'd need to be some chiropractic work.

Without letting too much of the plot slip, Andrew Kevin Walker captures the best parts of the novel in this story of blood, lust, direction, and finding oneself. You really never know what you're made of until you test it. Pitt and Norton's acting is highlighted by their mutual love interest, (Love triangle - romance addicts are in luck!) Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter).The film doesn't scream brutality at its core, even if that is what surfaces, but rather, they use this brutality to explore the humanity of such acts, and what sacrifice is necessary for gain, and if it's worth it. The notion that lives must be sacrificed for the good of the population is a much, much scarier notion when the initial lives in question are yours and mine, and that is exactly what this film is about. Tyler Durden, and Ed Norton's character are again reminders of the kind of men that have both a craziness and toughness that you and I could only dream of.