Cult hit is still boxing clever

As ‘Fight Club’ is re-released, David Fincher’s 1999 thriller is – once again – worth talking about, if only because it’s still swaggering, seething and lightly dangerous

- Xan Brooks

The first rule of Fight Club (1999) is that its fans talk about it constantly. They talk in public places, extolling the film’s edgy virtues to anyone within earshot, and they talk on online forums with the blinds tightly shut. Possibly, they talk about it more today – with more passion and excitement – than they did when the movie was released more than a quarter of a century ago. One can’t help but wonder whether this is a good thing or not.

Still, if you can’t beat them, join them - let’s say a few words about David Fincher’s Fight Club. It's a film that lends itself to different readings. It tests and teases the viewer much as its antihero, Tyler Durden, tests its unnamed sad-sack hero. Ed Norton plays the white-collar wage-slave who measures his sorry existence with a range of IKEA home furnishings. Brad Pitt costars as his galvanising agent of irreversible change, a soap salesman and red-pill revolutionary who preaches a gospel of liberative primal urges. Tyler’s first big idea is to arrange a series of bare-knuckle brawls in which emasculated beta-men can feel like gods for 10 minutes. His second big idea is to blow up the whole city. Ground zero, clean slate. That should separate the men from the boys.