David Fincher is quickly becoming one of Hollywoods bright new lights. With films like "Seven" and "The Game" under his belt, Fight Club should secure his place among the elite directors of today. (We will ignore the debacle of Alien3 for now, everybody has a bad day.) Fight Club is brilliantly directed and artfully executed in a style that is perfect for the films message. And what is that message? What is Fight Club?

      Give me a minute.

      They handed out bars of soap before the screening last night. Soap plays a somewhat important role in the storyline. (I won't give it away here.) But the soap is handy to have around after the movie as well, because you're going to want to wash your hands. Vigorously. Several times. Cause you're going to feel dirty, scummy. Unfortunately, the soap won't work on your mind. (Thanks Stan.) It's not going to clean away that strange nagging feeling that you're going to have. The feeling that you really didn't need to see this movie. That somehow you've come away from the experience a little less sane than when you went in.

      Fight Club was held back from release because of the shooting in Colorado earlier in the year. Typically, I'm not one of those people that think that's usually a good idea. But in this case, it was a great idea. Fight Club is a two-sided animal in more ways than one. The entire movie is built upon this duality. The double sided nature of man. And I mean MEN in capital letters. At its core it is an insightful statement about the state of young manhood in our American society. A young lost world in which the only release is aggression, violent aggression. You reap what you sow and we've finally reaped the fruit of a generation raised without significant male role models, namely fathers.

      Edward Norton is brilliant as the self reflecting all-in-one character that lives that life of meaningless existence. His is the character that embodies all of the traits of our youth today, tortured, questioning, searching for the answers. Until he finally finds a kind of friendship and purpose in Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). Tyler is a wild hair, a person outside of the world of the main character, who has no real name and is simply referred to as "Narrator" in the credits. Tyler Durden embodies all of the things that Narrator is not, free from societies bonds, quick witted, always quick with the right answer and most importantly of all...his yen, his SuperEgo if you will.

      This brings us full circle, back to that duality thing I mentioned earlier. It pervades the entire film. The question of how far can an idea go? How deeply into ourselves do we really wish to travel? The point is very clearly made. Unless you're willing to live with the consequences, perhaps you shouldn't look. Because what you find there might not be very pleasant.

      Fight Club is indeed disturbing. Its disturbing because of its potential reality. It IS plausible. The degree might be exaggerated, but the truth is not. I think that is what scares us the most. This is not the comic, ill conceived madness of Natural Born Killers. This is the hard-core, sometimes harsh world of men who snap. Men who find no other recourse than to walk into their work, their homes and take their rage out against family, strangers, anyone who stands in the way. Teenagers who feel they have no purpose in life. Directionless. Adrift. I can only hope that by shinning a light on this subject, Fight Club acts as a beacon of reason and understanding...and not as a standard bearer.

      Fight Club is a sometimes very funny movie. Its satire of our world is not limited to the above mentioned nature of man. It takes its shots at many different subjects, from airline travel, the insurance business, terrorism, small business, and liability lawsuits. In many places the actors address the audience directly, an often misplaced device, but in this context it works extremely well. The style of Fight Club is brilliant, the acting superior, the script perfection. Brad Pitt continues to shine and grow as an actor. He should be taken very seriously after this performance. Edward Norton is perfect.

      Will Fight Club be successful? Who knows. I certainly don't. But one thing is guaranteed. People will not forget Fight Club anytime soon. It will stay with you long after you've seen it. It's not an uplifting movie, it's certainly not a date flick, a chick flick, an action adventure or a moving testament to mans good side overcoming evil. It's simply a mirror. And what you see in that mirror depends on you.

Bryan Ward, 1999