Fight Club

(Rental Version)

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Details At A Glance

General		Extras
Category	Drama/Black Comedy	Theatrical Trailer(s)	Yes, 1 - 2.35:1 (Not 16x9 Enhanced), Dolby Digital 2.0
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1999	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	133:25 Minutes	Other Extras	None
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL (64:52)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu	Cast & Crew
Region	4	Director	David Fincher
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Brad Pitt Edward Norton Helena Bonham-Carter Meat Loaf Aday Jared Leto
Case	?	Starring
RRP	Rental-only	Music	Michael Simpson John King

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Dolby Digital	5.1
16x9 Enhancement		Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384 Kb/s)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	2.40:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	Yes	Smoking	Yes
Subtitles	English	Annoying Product Placement	Yes, sort of
Subtitles	English	Action In or After Credits	No

Plot Synopsis

Based on the Chuck Palahniuk novel of (presumably) the same name, Fight Club is one film that I unsuccessfully tried to convince myself to see on the big screen not long ago. The thing that stopped me from seeing it was almost certainly the fact that Brad Pitt is the top-billed star, and Edward Norton is not far behind, in combination with the advertising campaign of course. One other aspect that may or may not be to your liking is the manner in which director David Fincher has made this film an unabashed critique of Western Society that owes everything to Sigmund Freud. Before you email me and ask where the scenes about the main characters sleeping with their own mothers were, there is more to Freud's work than mothers and sexual psychology. One aspect to Freud's theories that this film borrows enough to make itself bankrupt from is the statement that repressed desires force a human being to define their self-worth by arbitrary means. In the case of the sexually repressed American teenage female, the inability to physically interact with the sexually repressed American teenage male is arbitrarily given outage by such things as excessive eating, the idea being that the physical interaction with a male is replaced by physical interaction with Twinkies. The fact that America is the most Christian Western society today, and also the most overweight society anywhere in the world per capita is no coincidence, and this is an important point to remember to appreciate the psychology of the film. This film is so much about the abnormal psychology of both the everyday and the not-quite-so-palatable variety that even I felt a little intimidated by the characterizations.

Jack (Edward Norton) works in an insurance company as an assessor and is unable to sleep at night. No big surprise there, you would think, but what is a bit of a surprise is the lengths he goes to in order to rid himself of this problem. In essence, he is addicted to support groups, and indeed, the opening of the film sees him at a meeting for survivors of testicular cancer, which is another nice Freudian reference for the few of you who will really notice it. In any case, as Jack is going from group to group, Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter) begins to intrude upon his meetings for a similar purpose, which leaves Jack's solution effectively neutralized. Eventually, we see Jack hopping on a plane for business purposes, where he encounters a strange man with a twisted philosophy by the name of Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). Whilst I am on this topic, I have to say that it is good to see that Hollywood has finally found a type of role that Brad Pitt is actually good at. In any case, the two eventually get together and form a sort of men's group called Fight Club, where men get together in groups and punch one another silly until certain conditions for an ending are met. One thing leads to another, and Tyler's influence over the members of the club grows to the point where they indulge in an amazing level of mischief, including stealing discarded body fat from liposuction clinics, processing it into soap, and selling it to fashion stores. This is an ironic way of making a few dollars that is rather amusing to behold. In any case, as Tyler's power grows and Jack continually alternates between feelings of power and subtle emasculation, we slowly burn our way towards a conclusion that I will not reveal for the sake of those who haven't seen yet, but simply describe as not really being supported in plausibility by the rest of the film.

Another problem that plagues this film is the fact that the rest of the cast of characters in this film is never really fleshed out to any degree, reducing the real acting to just three key players. The only notable performance in the film was that given by the character of Robert Paulson (Meat Loaf Aday), a man who is struggling to regain his manhood after being thoroughly emasculated by testicular cancer. In the end, we just don't give a damn about Angel Face (Jared Leto) or Boss (Zach Grenier), because they just don't seem to have enough of a personality for the things that are done to them to seem as if they are of any consequence. However, given the manner in which the three top-billed players interact, this is a minor fault that can be overlooked once the ball starts rolling. The point is that if you walk into this film expecting to see a story of a mob of He-Men beating the almighty crap out of each other, then you're going to be quite wildly surprised by the rest of the story. Sure, this is not quite up to the standards of A Clockwork Orange, which the film was quite favourably compared to when it began its theatrical run, but it does come close at times.

Lastly, this title is the first which Twentieth Century Fox will release with a rental window, with a six month wait for the version which the collector can buy outright. It is worth waiting for the retail version of this disc to arrive in what will most likely be November, as the full sale version of the disc will contain a great deal more extras. If you enjoy a good, adult-oriented story about society and the effect it can have on minds not fully equipped to deal with it (like my own for instance), then you will enjoy Fight Club. Just be warned that it earns its R rating quite well, and it is not a film for use as part of a night of family entertainment unless you belong to an immediate family where the youngest member is legally an adult, such as the one I often feel quite emasculated by (I wondered why this aspect of the film bothered me so). As such, it is definitely worth paying your money to rent for the evening.

Transfer Quality

Video

Well, the plot may have a gaping hole or two, but the holes in the video transfer are so minute that the majority of DVD users will not notice them, and an even bigger majority certainly won't care about them. The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, complete with 16x9 enhancement. To say that the film looks good even by the standards of a sixth-month-old film is an understatement, as the pieces of paper I wrote comments about the transfer on only had one serious concern about the video. The rest of the negative comments I wrote down were pertaining to the aforementioned plot issues that I am sure someone will notice. The transfer is as sharp as the edge of my favourite scalpel from start to finish, making it easy to see all the sickening, viscous fluids that pop up from time to time. The shadow detail was somewhat limited considering the film's age, but this was definitely a deliberate choice on the part of the production team rather than a transfer fault, as you could easily see everything that the director felt you needed to. No low-level noise became apparent at any point in the transfer.

The colour saturation was spot-on, with the grimy, dingy tones of most of the locations blending well into the flesh tones, and more importantly, the abundant use of the colour red.

There were no MPEG artefacts seen at any point in the transfer until one scene at 63:51, in which Helena Bonham Carter can be seen carrying what appears to be two plastic lunch containers. For less than a second, there appears to be a shimmer and a slight pixelization in one of those containers, but it is necessary to have your eyes glued to the screen to notice, as well as repeated slow-motion replays to discern the extent of this flaw. This may actually be aliasing, but the line through the picture that also appears at this point for a single frame confuses the issue. Other than this slight problem that could either be an MPEG or film-to-video artefact, there were no instances of film-to-video artefacts at all in the transfer, in spite of the plethora of objects that would be aliasing-prone. Film artefacts were present, which is somewhat disappointing for such a recent film, but they only consisted of the occasional speck on the negative that only the most anal-retentive among us would complain about. Overall, this is a very clear and clean transfer that screams out the superiority of the DVD format in a voice that cannot be denied, and I pity the poor fools who try to watch this film on VHS.

This disc is presented in the RSDL format, with the layer change occurring at 64:52, as Edward Norton finishes closing a door. This is an extremely well-placed layer change that only takes a fraction of a second, and would be completely unnoticeable to anyone who doesn't know what to look for, another area where this disc demonstrates how a DVD should be put together.

Audio

Matching the awe-inspiring video transfer is a stunning audio transfer that should be mailed directly to George Lucas with a little note advising him to listen to it and compare the difference between this disc and his VHS-only releases. There is only one audio track included with this rental version, that being the original English dialogue in Dolby Digital 5.1, but what a soundtrack it is. I would have liked to hear a dubbing of the soundtrack in German, given that this is the language from which Freud's works had to be translated, but this is a moot point in terms of enjoyment and therefore value-for-money. The dialogue, such as it is, was completely clear and easy to understand at all points, which is extremely important when you think about how important the dialogue is to plot movement. Often, characters can be heard screaming or mumbling, and yet every single word spoken with the exception of crowds shouting (and that is a very minor exception) can be easily made out. Often, characters speak over the top of the sound of men being beaten or smashed into the floor, and not even the kick of the subwoofer obscures what they have to say. Audio sync was not a problem at any point, although very little of the dialogue would have required any ADR dubbing to begin with. Even the sounds of punches were perfectly in time with the visuals, which is a difficult feat to pull with visuals like these.

The music in this film is credited on the back cover to The Dust Brothers (Michael Simpson and John King), and makes excellent use of dramatic classical instrumentals at various points throughout the film. At one moment, you'd sit and simply listen along with the violence and the dialogue, and then, out of nowhere, the score music would pop back in and introduce itself to your ears again. The music is highly varied throughout the film, making it difficult to nail down to one specific genre or compositional technique, but the overall feel is quite a timeless one that excels where the score music for A Clockwork Orange failed.

The surround presence is where this disc really excels, with every channel in the field getting a thorough and unrelenting workout that drew this particular viewer into the film and made him feel like he was a part of each punching match or mischievous endeavour of Tyler and Jack. Cityscape noises such as trains and cars, the sounds of fists hitting torsos, the sounds of liposuctioned fat slopping from broken containers: all of these things were held up in the rears like part of a fortress ready for battle against silence. Even the traditionally under-used centre channel was called upon to support the dialogue and some split surround effects, with the result being a soundtrack where one cannot tell which speaker the sound comes from unless they put their ear to a specific speaker. The sound seemed to just radiate inwards from the borders set by the speakers' locations. The subwoofer also received quite a workout, being subtly and skilfully integrated into the mix without any fuss or attention-seeking. This is an immersive, reference-quality soundtrack that should be held as an example to everyone.

Extras

As I mentioned previously, this is a rental-only version of this DVD, and the full retail version that is scheduled to be released later in the year will contain a lot more extras. Fox seem to understand that it is all about the movie, and who has the time to listen to an audio commentary or watch a making-of featurette when the disc is only on loan for the night?

Theatrical Trailer (2:33)

This is presented in in aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and is not 16x9 enhanced. There is what appears to be a brief MPEG artefact present at the twenty-eight second mark.

R4 vs R1

The Region 1 version of this disc was not released with a rental window, and as such, is the full retail version. Comparisons between a rental-market release and a fully-featured retail release would be unfair, and pointless since the two full retail versions will most likely be identical except for the use of PAL formatting here.

Summary

Fight Club took me by surprise and thoroughly entertained me, and I hope the full retail version is as well-presented as this one. If the video and audio quality stay the same and the extras are as enjoyable as the film, it will dethrone Shakespeare In Love quite easily from the top of the Hall Of Fame.

The video quality is wonderful, and almost reference material except for about twelve frames of problems.

The audio quality is reference material, a shining example of how a film about violence and psychology should sound.

The extras are perfectly sufficient for a rental release.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

Review Equipment

DVD	Grundig GDV 100 D, using composite output; Toshiba SD-2109, using S-video output
Display	Panasonic TC-29R20 (68 cm), 4:3 mode, using composite input; Samsung CS-823AMF (80 cm), 16:9 mode/4:3 mode, using composite and S-video inputs
Audio Decoder	Built In (Amplifier)
Amplification	Sony STR-DE835
Speakers	Panasonic S-J1500D Front Speakers, Sharp CP-303A Back Speakers, Philips FB206WC Centre Speaker, JBL Digital 10 Subwoofer