....7...8...9...10...You're Out!!!...Fights Over!!!
             From the very beginning of the movie, Fight Club attempts to take us on an adrenaline ride. The film starts as a rush of adrenaline is shown going to the brain of the Narrator (Edward Norton) as the camera pans back to reveal a gun being stuck in his mouth. From this imaginative beginning the movie slowly spirals downward to a pool of the dark water and blood director David Fincher populates the film with. While Fight Club seems to have the best of intentions, social commentary can be a noble cause; the movie doesn't connect like one of the haymakers thrown by the underground fighters. Instead the movie leaves its chin out waiting for someone to deliver the knockout punch. Where Fight Club fails to deliver is that it tries to cover too much ground and never strongly address any of the social problems it's trying to cover. Is it railing against the commercialism that populates our culture? Is it a film that is trying to talk about the emasculating of males (a theme that seems to be occurring quite frequently in ninety's movies; The Full Monty, American Beauty)? Or is it a film that is saying males are all looking for an outlet to release our primal animals, to strip to the bear minimal and fight in dark and dirty basements? We may never know.
             Edward Norton plays the part of a lifeless soul trapped in the corporate machine very well. The beginning of the movie he walks around in a daze with dull eyes. He's an insomniac who defines his life by the possessions he owns. To help curb his insomnia, The Narrator begins attending self-help meetings for groups as varied as testicular cancer to tuberculiocus. Norton's character needs these meetings because they enable him to become a different person. But this bliss is interrupted when someonelse begins attending these same meetings. Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter) plays a disturbed chain smoker who is attending these mee...