Fight Club 1999

Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel: Fight Club is an empty shout of 'To hell with it all!' Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: Blistering, hallucinatory, often brilliant, the film by David Fincher is a combination punch of social satire and sociopathology. Read more

Susan Stark, Detroit News: Bloody mess of a guy film loses its battle to have any real meaning. Read more

Philip Wuntch, Dallas Morning News: An original piece of filmmaking! Read more

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: A bloody, hilarious ride into the twisted recesses of the modern male psyche. Read more

Janet Maslin, New York Times: The director of Seven and The Game for the first time finds subject matter audacious enough to suit his lightning-fast visual sophistication, and puts that style to stunningly effective use. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: Fight Club is an arresting, eventually appalling excursion into social satire by way of punishing violence. Read more

Steve Murray, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Along with the superior technical work, the movie shows off its three leads at their best. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: If the first rule of Fight Club is 'Nobody talks about Fight Club,' a fitting subsection might be 'Why would anyone want to?' Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: This is American self-absorption at its finest. Read more

Jeff Millar, Houston Chronicle: Pitt's best work since A River Runs Through It. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: If, as Fincher has said, this movie is supposed to be funny, then the joke's on us. Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: We're meant to take the male bonding and the blood rituals as a protest against the sterility of corporate life and modern design, but Fincher's sadomasochistic kicks overwhelm any possible social critique. Read more

Peter Rainer, New York Magazine/Vulture: Fight Club rolls out its indictments and its Zen koans, but what it really resembles, perhaps unknowingly, is the squall of a whiny and essentially white-male generation that feels ruined by the privileges of women and a booming economy. Read more

Jami Bernard, New York Daily News: Oh, for the time when men were men and were encouraged to beat the tar out of one another. That's the world "Fight Club" pines for. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: The Fight Club is a memorable and superior motion picture - a rare movie that does not abandon insight in its quest to jolt the viewer. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: If it had all continued in the vein explored in the first act, it might have become a great film. But the second act is pandering and the third is trickery. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: It's about being young, male and powerless against the pacifying drug of consumerism. It's about solitude, despair and bottled-up rage... It's about daring to imagine the disenfranchised reducing the world to rubble and starting over. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: Fight Club is a distinctively dense and often hilarious film, but in the end it's nonsense. Read more

Bob Graham, San Francisco Chronicle: Delivers a sucker punch to the audience and then pulls the rug out from under it. It is sensational. Read more

Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine: It is working American Beauty-Susan Faludi territory, that illiberal, impious, inarticulate fringe that threatens the smug American center with an anger that cannot explain itself, can act out its frustrations only in inexplicable violence. Read more

Time Out: You can call [it] irresponsible. Or you can call it the only essential Hollywood film of 1999. Read more

David Rooney, Variety: [A] bold, inventive, sustained adrenaline rush of a movie... Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: Extremely funny, surprisingly well-acted, and boldly designed -- at least until its steel-and-chrome souffle falls apart. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: If you want a movie that makes sense and doesn't make you chuckle at its sophomoric satire, laugh this one right off your list. Read more