The Good

An interesting movie about one of the best and worst time times in this country’s history.

The Bad

This movie played a little too over the top at times.

Patrick Batemen (Christian Bale) has dreams of making money and he spends his days on Wall Street competing with other young and like minded people. He is completely detached and when he goes home at night he lives in a sprawling, expensive, high rise spot. This is the 1980s and wanting it all has not been deemed inappropriate yet.

However, Patrick has a secret…

He’s a killer and he comes up with unique ways to do in his victims. Being a strikingly good looking guy with a lot of money, he’s never wanting for company and because of that it makes it easier for him to commit his crimes and even easier for Patrick to forget about them. He may have a police detective on his trail (Willem Dafoe) and a naive girlfriend (Reese Witherspoon), but Batemen doesn’t seem to have any other goals other than too appear normal on the outside.

American Psycho is violent, brutal and over the top in many ways. It seems like the material (based on the best seller by Bret Easton Ellis) would need to be done in this way, because there really is no rhyme of reason to this character. He seems to be the embodiment of certain aspects of Americana. He’s successful and smart for no other reason than he can be. He’s also completely out of his mind for probably the same reason.

Features

This Blu-ray disc comes with two separate commentary tracks. One is with director Mary Harron and the other is with writer/actress Guinevere Turner. I chose to listen to the one with Mary Harron because I was curious about certain things she did with this film. I wanted to know why she took things in a somewhat campy direction? She touches on this stuff a little bit, but she really seems to be watching her own film here and commenting on things as they come up. She talks about why she wanted Christian Bale to star in this film, the material, and some of the obstacles and problems that happened as she brought this movie to the big screen.

Deleted Scenes

Five deleted scenes come on this DVD. They also contain a commentary track. I chose to listen to these without that, mainly because I didn’t think I was going to hear anything that would enlighten me any more than the feature length audio commentary. These were interesting to look at, but I think it’s obvious that they were extracted from the film more for aesthetic reasons than anything else. I would say if you are big fan of this movie (or the book) you will want to give these things a look.

The 80’s: Downtown

A rather long (it’s almost 30 minutes) featurette about what the 1980s were like in downtown New York. As I am a self-professed lover of that time period, I really found this intriguing. Sure there’s the clothes and the styles which reminded me of time’s gone by, but there was also something really special. It’s like after the 1960s and 1970s, this country sort of returned to the 1950s in some ways. It was safer then than it is today, even if after watching this footage we only realize that it just seemed that way.

Video

1080p - MPEG-2 - 2.35:1. This movie looked clear even though it doesn’t seem like the images have been cleaned up like some other Blu-ray releases. I don’t know how this movie was shot but it seems to be blown out a bit. The picture seems overly bright and this causes everything to look a bit overexposed. When I first saw this movie in the theater, I noticed that it had this look a bit but it seems to be somewhat more prevalent here. Mary Harron has directed this movie in an almost dyspeptic environment, which helps get us inside the heads of the Bateman characters. This minimalist approach has sort of given the images too much room to linger.

Audio

DTS-HD High Resolution 6.1 and Dolby Digital EX Surround. The audio here was good but I think I was expecting it to take my system out for more of a spin. Things were loud when they needed to be loud, soft when it was appropriate, but all in all, this movie doesn’t seem like it should have had some amazing soundwork. It was full for the most part but it truthfully didn’t play like something that would create some amazing audio experience. I found that Christian Bale’s voice worked really well in this audio environment. It has a very commanding tone that in a weird way filled the entire room.

Package

Christian Bale stands on this front cover holding a glistening knife. The back portion of this disc has some pictures from the movie, a description of what American Psycho is about, a Special Features list, a cast list and system specs. I really wish these Blu-ray releases had corners instead of rounded edges. Other than that, they are starting to grow on me.

Final Word

I liked American Psycho a little more than when I saw it in the movie theater. Having never read the novel, I must admit that I was put off (and I am still put off) by some of director Mary Harron’s directing decisions. I guess I just wish I could get a better handle on the killings. This might be my fault, but they seem to be handled in such a way that we can’t take them seriously. I know that is supposed to shade the Batemen character, but I remember sitting in the theater and I was as clueless as some other people as to why he was dancing before he murdered one of his victims. I get the allegory that Wall Street is like a killing zone and that is supposed to correlate with what Batemen is doing, I just wish it all didn’t feel so heavy handed.

Still, there is a vision behind this movie. There are ideas at work, scope and a sterileness that really seems to bode well for the actors and the other players involved. I don’t have any problem with Harron adding her own spin, I just wish that it would have been done in moderation. Then again, she probably felt that there was nothing moderate at all about the subject matter of American Psycho.

American Psycho was released April 13, 2000.