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“The first rule of fight club is, you do not talk about fight club. The second rule of fight club is, you do not talk about fight club.”

Fight Club (1999) is an intriguing movie which not only provides a refreshingly new plot, but also surprises and puzzles at every little turn of the movie. With an equally spectacular ending and finale, it is a brilliant film adaptation of a novel of the similar name.

Edward Norton stars as an unnamed narrator, telling the story from his point of view, about his life. The narrator is a simple domestic man, a slave to his job, which does product recalls for defective cars, living a simple, well-to-do life. However, he feels that his life is somewhat imperfect and undefined. As a result, he gets drawn to a materialistic type of lifestyle, where he thinks that he can define his success in life via his possessions, leading him to frequently purchase such extravagant furniture. Together the need of frequent travel due to his job, he becomes disturbed to the point that he suffers from chronic insomnia.

He quickly finds solace and “therapy” in the form of visiting various support groups which provide care and attention to those with terminal illnesses, fatal injuries and that sort of ilk. Through these groups, he feels the attention that he lacks in his usual life via meeting the people who are even more less fortunate then him, being addicted to these groups as a cure for his insomnia. However, when complications arrive, he finds himself unavailable to join these groups, and desperate for another solution, he meets a strange man by the name of Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt.

Tyler then introduces the narrator to the idea of a Fight Club, a club where a number of people who feel that they have lost their identity in the growing consumer world of today, and need an outlet to perhaps gain some form of healing in the form releasing aggression. The goal is to bring us back to our basic instincts, away from the complex world of today, acting as an eccentric form of psychotherapy to reduce the discomforts of the modern world. The story continues and follows these two men, and where the name of Fight Club might bring them into, escalating into a stunning storyline with a twist ending.

However, despite the originality of the movie, the complicated theme portrayed within the story would only appeal to a minority of people. The story deals the conflict that ordinary men today have with the consumerism lifestyle that our world is growing into, where one’s sense of success and meaning in life can only originate from their materialistic possessions, or so they think. These very mature themes, I’m afraid, would scare off the casual watchers, who would be confused about the meaning of several contexts within the film. In addition to that, Fight Club exaggerates the number of violent scenes in the movie, leading to much more gore than needed.

Despite having a plot which drives in a completely new direction, leaving the audience guessing to how the story would evolve, it is being offset by the mature themes brought forward in the film. This was probably the main result it failed terrible in the box offices, only doing much better in DVD releases. With a brain-bending plot and ending, Fight Club (1999) is still an excellent movie which would get an interested watcher grasping at the straws to understand the meaning behind every subtle action.

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