rated on a 4-star scale screening venue : odeon ( liverpool city centre ) released in the uk by entertainment distribution on april 21 , 2000 ; certificate 18 ; 101 minutes ; countries of origin canada/usa ; aspect ratio 2 . 35 : 1 directed by mary harron ; produced by chris hanley , edward r . pressman , christian halsley solomon . written by mary harron , guinevere turner ; based on the novel by bret easton ellis . photographed by andrjez sekula ; edited by andrew marcus . patrick bateman is someone tom wolfe might have come up with if he had written his books on acid . he's an arrogant suit from wall street obsessed with physical fitness , facial care products , designer clothing and expensive restaurants . and scoring cocaine . and misogyny . oh , and he likes to mutilate people , and play around with their guts , too . the character is the creation of bret easton ellis , whose 1991 novel " american psycho " was set amid the manhattan yuppie scene of the late 1980s . the book was twisted , but it needed to be , because it had extreme things to say . ellis saw the widespread obsessive egoism and greed of the me decade as dangerously sick , and his vision of its potential to produce vicious murderers makes a fair amount of sense . after all , any idiotic businessmen who made enough bucks could follow their every impulse and shit on whomever they wanted to , and their attitude was championed as fashionable . now " american psycho " is a film directed by mary harron , with christian bale in the lead role . as in the source material , bateman divides his time between working out , making lunch appointments , sitting around in his office and butchering fellow new yorkers . onscreen we see him stabbing a homeless man and a female acquaintance , decapitating a hooker with a chainsaw , blowing up a crowd of cops , chopping up one of his colleagues with an axe and telling us about numerous other crimes . even when a private detective ( willem dafoe ) starts investigating the disappearances , though , bateman never comes close to being caught . why would anyone suspect a 'normal' , standard , efficient young capitalist earner of criminal activity ? the killings in the story hammer home in a jarring manner the message of how inhuman bateman and his ilk are ; although his chums don't kill people or know that he's doing so , they do share his level of detachment from decent values . most of the film illustrates this through black humour . in one scene , for example , a group of men use their business cards for a vanity contest , comparing them like cowboys showing off the sizes of their guns . the problem with the comedy in the film is that harron doesn't trust the material to be intrinsically funny , and has her actors deliver lines in broad , goofy tones , making clear they're in on the joke . that doesn't prevent us from laughing , but it does affect the satirical power of many moments -- we giggle mainly because the characters are talking in a preposterous manner , rather than because they're saying preposterous things . since almost every scene is performed in this silly way , the film is nowhere near as intense as the novel . if we laugh at the characters' paper-thin morals , that's the extent of our reaction ; harron doesn't let us give them enough thought to also be appalled by them . you could take the murders out of her " american psycho " and it would be the same movie -- its purpose is to merely point at the vacant pomposity of the male yuppie , and ridicule it . still , on that level the movie works well . although it is a missed opportunity ( ellis's angry expression of the madness of the situation was more affecting ) , it is at least an entertaining deflation of white-collar stuffed shirts , and those guys can be the most despicable of people . i see them all the time in bars and restaurants , thinking their suits make them mature , arrogantly raising their voices , telling stupid childish jokes to each other , rambling in stockbroker jargon that they think impresses onlookers . and now , whenever that happens , i can smile to myself that someone else in the vicinity will have probably seen this movie , and will be laughing inside at what morons it shows them to be . copyright ( c ) 2000 ian waldron-mantgani please visit , and encourage others to visit , the uk critic's website , which is located at <a href= " http : //members . aol . com/ukcritic " >http : //members . aol . com/ukcritic</a> 
