American Psycho (2000)

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General		Extras
Category	Horror	Dolby Digital Trailer-City Isolated Musical Score Theatrical Trailer Featurette Biographies-Cast & Crew
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	97:55
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Mary Harron
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Christian Bale Willem Dafoe Jared Leto Josh Lucas Samantha Mathis Matt Ross Bill Sage Chloe Sevigny Cara Seymour Justin Theroux Guinevere Turner Reese Witherspoon
Case	Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI	$36.95	Music	John Cale

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) Isolated Music Score Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English Spanish Bulgarian Czech Hungarian Polish Portuguese	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    How to get the most out of American Psycho:

    Step 1. Read the book by Bret Easton Ellis.
    Step 2. (optional) Watch the movie on DVD.
    Step 3. Read the book again, perhaps after some time has passed.
    Step 4. Yes, read the book once more.
    Step 5. That night, if you have nothing to do, sit down and watch the DVD.
    Step 6. Go to Step 1.

    Listen, the movie is good. It's a remarkably faithful adaptation of Ellis' brilliant literary novel, which by the way happens to be my favourite book of all time. A few directors have taken a crack at the seemingly impossible task: David Cronenberg and Oliver Stone, for example. Both men are more talented and experienced than the film's eventual director and co-writer Mary Harron, whose feature film résumé up till now consists of 1996's I Shot Andy Warhol. Although Cronenberg and Stone may have created cinematic masterpieces, I suspect that they also could have warped the material to its detriment. For better or worse, history will note that Mary Harron directed American Psycho, and fairly well, too. A review of the movie written by Bret Easton Ellis appears on the official movie website. He is generally appreciative of how the themes and tone of the novel were communicated to film. Ellis writes: "Like the novel, the movie is essentially plotless, a horror-comedy with a thin narrative built up of satirical riffs about greed, status and the business values of the 1980s culture."

    Patrick Bateman, 27, good-looking and rich, holds down a job on Wall Street as an executive at Pierce and Pierce (cute), a firm his father owns. Patrick Bateman is also a psychopath. His diseased mentality has been growing steadily like a tumour, fed by the bland, superficial accoutrements of life as a New York yuppie. It seems that the more stylish the business card, the more pompous the girlfriend, or the more expensive the meal ("speaking of reasonable...only $570"), the bigger Patrick's rage becomes. He is like an embodiment of Munch's painting The Scream, or a ticking bomb that resets itself with a shorter fuse after each explosion. To charge his numbed synapses, Patrick resorts to doing hard drugs, watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Inside Lydia's Ass, listening to vacuous artists like Phil Collins and Huey Lewis And The News, engaging in group sex, dining on expensive boutique cuisine, dropping serial killer trivia into everyday conversation, collecting power tools, pandering to his narcissism, and indulging his sexual sadism. Trouble is that his latent psychopathic urges gradually pull back the curtain of his sanity, revealing a monstrous metaphor that no one recognises...perhaps because Patrick is so insane that his incredible acts of violence are exactly that: not credible, at least to the world outside his skull.

    Welshman Christian Bale (Empire of the Sun) was a good choice for Patrick Bateman. His American accent rang true, although I suspect the dialogue coaching added the same note of oddness that Gwyneth Paltrow had in Sliding Doors. When discussing the daunting task of getting into shape for American Psycho, Bale quipped, "In Britain we don't go to the gym, we go to the pub." Bale's finest moment is the frenzied phone call he makes to his lawyer toward the end of the film. You can't help laughing at Patrick's emotional anguish in this scene. Something else to consider: Bates, Bateman, Bale. Hmmm.

    The production design by Gideon Ponte creates a bourgeois 1980s backdrop for Patrick and his friends to inhabit. The images in my head of the various clubs and restaurants were more elegant and glossy than those shown in the film, but of course I've never been to New York. Patrick's minimalist apartment, with its classic designer furniture (Mies van der Rohr, Mackintosh), luminous white surfaces, and stainless steel kitchen has all the warmth and charm of an operating theatre. I love it.

    Since this is a first-person narrative, the supporting characters are relegated to the background. Jared Leto (Fight Club, Urban Legend) as Paul Allen and Justin Theroux as Timothy Bryce are both excellent, as is Chloë Sevigny playing Patrick's delicate, love-lorn secretary Jean. Her scene with Patrick in his apartment is quite fabulous, one of the best in the film. The pouting, yuppie "hardbody" girlfriends are played by the decidedly unattractive Reese Witherspoon and Samantha Mathis, who fail to pull off the sex kitten/bimbo demeanour that is integral to the book. Mathis in particular looks like she's been up all night tending to a sick goldfish. They may be good actors, but their short screen time didn't justify being cast, although in all fairness, none of the actors are given much of a chance to develop their characters. Co-writer Guinevere Turner is terrific as Patrick's acquaintance Elizabeth; she had more spunk than any of the other women. Willem Dafoe as inspector Donald Kimball was effective and Matt Ross as Luis Carruthers is picture perfect.

    The novel contains some of the most horrific gore set pieces I have ever read. Harron's movie alludes to the bloodshed and sadism that Patrick unleashes upon his victims, which is toned down here for mainstream consumption. Thematically, I think Bret Easton Ellis made the violence that offensive to imprint his satirical ideas with a high degree of disgust, so that readers could not recall what is otherwise a light, if droll, comedy about the 1980s without feeling nauseous. I would have preferred more overt torture, killings, and cannibalism in the movie, but the result is precisely as expected in today's censorship climate. Australia has received the uncut edition, rated R 18+ theatrically and on this DVD. State-side cinema prints had slightly less bedroom gymnastics.

    Think of American Psycho as a condensed version of the book, which (like most novels) has too many scenes to film, anyway. The vibe is the same, the author's literary aspirations and subtexts are there, the performances are competent overall, and the black comedy works wonderfully. While it could have been longer, sleazier, and nastier, the movie still represents the best attempt of all those involved at translating difficult material with a smallish $8 million budget onto the screen. And it survives repeated viewings, unlike some of its characters...heh heh!

Video

    Sharpness and detail is decent throughout. Foreground and background elements are rendered keenly, although not as refined as in high profile titles. Thankfully there is no sign of the mild edge enhancement reported on the Region 1 DVD. Shadow detail is wanting at times, for example in the restaurant scene with Kimball and Bateman (the dark suits are virtually silhouettes) and when Bateman patrols the dingy wharf district looking for prostitutes. As a result, blacks can look soupy, but these instances are rare because most of the film is brightly lit.

   Colours look natural and properly saturated. Skin tones were good, there was no colour bleed, and colour consistency was fine. The blood on Patrick's face in one scene looked rather false; who knows whether this was intentional or not. The print I saw at Village / Crown Casino was duller and more washed out than this transfer.

    Blemishes appeared in the form of black and white specks, and film grain was rife during the all-white opening credit sequence, which I also noticed at the theatrical screening. The grain disappears pretty fast, at any rate. Venetian blinds cause shimmer chaos with every scene they show up in – Patrick's office windows just happen to be covered with them. Apart from these film artefacts, there were no other film or compression problems. Columbia Tristar have delivered another classy transfer, this time with imperfect materials and in a single layer. Thankfully the recurring transfer nightmare that has plagued Sekula's best known film Pulp Fiction has not infected American Psycho.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Dialogue was clear and centred most of the time. A couple of scenes featured fast talking exchanges between Bateman's friends; some of the words can only be picked up on the subtitles. There were no distortion or synchronization glitches.

    John Cale has composed the original music for a number of films, including Mary Harron's I Shot Andy Warhol, Jonathan Demme's Something Weird and Caged Heat, not to mention Andy Warhol's Heat way back in the early 1970s. For American Psycho he has arranged a mixture of sunny, frivolous tunes that sound like they are played by a string quartet, together with pieces that underscore Patrick Bateman's escalating hysteria. The music itself sounded full and rich in this mix, with good separation and imaging across the front sound stage. Listen to the isolated track if you want to analyse the cues in depth. The rock songs by Huey Lewis And The News, Robert Palmer, David Bowie, Chris de Burgh, Katrina and the Waves, The Cure, Phil Collins, and many others all deliver a punch when given a generous volume boost.

    The surrounds were engaged often to generate an enveloping sound stage, with ambient city sounds emanating from all sides of the room, and split surround effects doing a good job of making us believe that a helicopter is buzzing Bateman around town. In fact, we never actually see the helicopter. Evidence of dynamic range was demonstrated when Patrick pulls out his chainsaw. This sequence was so startling that I fingered the volume down automatically, thinking the neighbours would be busting through my door at any minute. Subwoofer assistance was called upon several times, though mainly during the rock numbers for the bass kicks.

    Overall this is an entertaining sound track. It's not the best I've heard, but it's a long way from being the worst.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menus

Featurette (5:08)

Theatrical Trailer (2.00)

Talent Bios (8 pages)

    There is censorship information available for this title. Click here to read it (a new window will open). WARNING: Often these entries contain MAJOR plot spoilers.

    Luckily Columbia Tristar's DVD looks better than the cinema print I saw. The video quality is sound and the audio package transports you squarely between the ears of a psychopath. A bigger windfall at the box office may have guaranteed more extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall