Fight Club review

Brad Pitt sells soap. An unlikely kick-off point, perhaps, for a film whose graphic violence and apparently amoral attitude has once again sent certain publications and media outlets into a lather over issues of censorship.

This reviewer's opinion? It's brutal and shocking and frequently unpleasant - it's also one of the best films I've seen this year. And the cold, hard reality? It has an 18 certificate, and no-one will be forced to watch it if they don't want to - but at least you're still free to make that decision yourself.

Freelance soap-seller Pitt (Tyler Durden) begins his relationship with insomniac insurance analyst Edward Norton (The Narrator) on a business flight. For Norton, the trip provides at least minor respite from his normal routine: nights spent haunting a variety of self-help support groups for diseases he doesn't have. He's searching for some sort of emotional connection with his bleak, soulless world.

And then his apartment explodes into little shreds of burning domesticity, and the only number he has to call is Tyler's. But having shared a beer of solace, they indulge in a bizarre car park scrap, and though bruised and bloodied, The narrator has never felt so alive. Before long, they have established an illegal, bare-knuckle boxing club in the bar basement for men of like mind. And from this growing band, the anarchist army is gradually recruited.

All of which doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of this dark, disturbing and superbly vivid thriller.

It's very evident that director David Fincher (Seven, The Game) is obsessed with paranoia and the murkier side of the human soul. Very evident, too, that his stories are layered, distinctive and arresting, and every frame is considered; calculated to feel at the edges of mainstream film-making.

Which means a strange, special effects-heavy opening credit sequence flowing into a pastiche of home furnishing adverts, jostling in a film with stark, bone-crunching fight scenes (superbly directed) and a gradually converging master plan of some extreme mischief.

And once again in Fincher's hands, Pitt is on top of his game, a wildly charismatic presence at the seething, blackly comic heart of this picture, and not afraid to put his pretty boy chops through the ringer. He's matched blow-for-blow by another impressive turn from Norton, who has shown this brooding, dark-undercurrents-just-below-the-surface performance before in Primal Fear and American History X, and takes it to a whole new level here.

And for all the flash and thunder and visual novelty, it's the unpredictable, irresistible qualities of the two leads - supported very well by a striking Helena Bonham Carter as trampy love interest Marla Singer, and rock monster Meat Loaf - that makes this film clutch at your senses, and hold fast.

So, as a wise man once said: you cannot be told what Fight Club is; you have to see it for yourself. But only if you think you're hard enough.