A wealthy New York investment banking executive, Patrick Bateman is also in the business of keeping his psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends a secret.
American Psycho is nearly perfect for what it is, but before we go on, we should ask what that actually amounts to. Can something with so rigid a thesis be a real work of art?
It's hard to summon up enthusiasm for a performance so rooted in bloody banality. I mean, as Patrick, Bale's most emotionally pressing dilemma is: Chainsaw or butcher knife?
Mary Harron asks what's more unnerving - exaggerated, imagined violence or vacuous realities some wish to be real, psychosis as much in the construct as the character. Thus, "Psycho's" savagery goes beyond a simple screed against 1980s excess and greed.
The slick satire cleverly equates materialism, narcissism, misogyny, and classism with homicide, but you may laugh so loud at the protagonist that you won't be able to hear yourself laughing with him.