Director: Mary Harron

Main Cast: Christian Bale, Justin Theroux, Josh Lucas, Bill Sage, Chloe Sevigny, Reese Witherspoon, Samantha Mathis, Matt Ross, Jared Leto, Willem Dafoe, Cara Seymour & Guinevere Turner

Genre: Crime, Drama

Plot: Christian Bale plays a hot-shot investment banker working in New York called Patrick Bateman. He does his best to fit in with his work colleagues whilst hiding his violent fantasies. We follow Bateman as he indulges further and further into madness. It starts with rude remarks made out of earshot, and becomes much, much worse.

My Thoughts: It’s taken me a whole week to try and put my thoughts into words. American Psycho has been on my watch list for so long now I don’t remember what conversation with who made me put it there to begin with, but I know it’s a well-received movie by many. I’m just not sure I really loved it to be honest.

Bateman is a complete psycho, there is no doubt. To begin with, I actually found the movie quite funny, but I’m not sure I was meant to? Once the paced picked up and Bateman actually committed murder my attention picked up again, and of course, if you’ve seen the movie yourself you’ll know how confusing the ending is. It didn’t sit well with me at all to begin with, but the more I thought about it (and looked it up on the web – not gonna lie) the more it made sense and I appreciated it.

It’s a movie I’m really glad I watched but I know I don’t need to see it again. One thing for sure though is that Cristian Bale put on a fantastic performance!

Best Bit: Hands down the rivalry Bateman had with his colleagues about the quality of their business cards. It was just so absurd, and as someone with a total obsession with all things stationery related, I can completely relate.

Worst Bit: There’s no particular moment but I didn’t enjoy the first half hour much at all, I nearly gave up. It just took too long to get me interested in the story.

Fun Trivia: Christian Bale was warned by many that it would be career suicide for him to play the lead in a film like this. This only made him more eager to take the part. Fortunately for him, the opposite turned out to be true: Bale’s role in the movie was considered a breakthrough performance, and enabled him to shift his career from supporting roles to leading man status is the decades to come.

My Rating: 3 out of 5 very high-quality business cards, which are far fancier than yours will ever be.