Thursday, April 13, 2000

A Dahmer in designer suits slashes '80s excess in 'Psycho'

   Everything that the dreadful movie version of "Bonfire of the Vanities" failed to show about 1980s decadence, the new film "American Psycho" (opening Friday) depicts in nearly perfect detail. Plates of dainty nouvelle nibbles dribbled with tiny dollops of sauce and served with heaps of attitude. Yardwide Joan Collins shoulder pads. Disco coke-sniffing and competitive possession envy. The pop music banalities of Huey Lewis, Whitney Houston and Phil Collins.
   Su-su-ssudio, for God's sake.
   All of it, the soul-sucking tensions and pretensions of the Reagan-Bush decade, serve as motivators for the anti-hero of "American Psycho," a seething mass of Yuppie scum named Patrick Bateman (played by Christian Bale).
   Based on the controversial novel by '80s literary wonderboy Bret Easton Ellis, "American Psycho" slices away at the excesses of American boom times with the same zeal Bateman uses when he needs to cope with peer pressure. To let off a little steam after a hard day in a Manhattan high rise, he takes a silver ax to the skull of his chief rival, a handsome boor named Paul Allen (played by Jared Leto and not based on the real-life computer billionaire with the same name).
   Or he hires a hooker and chases her with a chain saw. Or he looks up an old girlfriend and . . . well . . . he stores more than sorbet in his Sub-Zero freezer.
   Bateman is Dahmer in designer suits, Hannibal Lecter with herbal moisturizing mask.
   Master of the Universe
   On the inside he's the demon barber of Wall Street. To the world he's one of the young masters of the universe who all sport the same glossy haircut, embossed business cards and skinny beige girlfriends. Bateman's very blandness helps him escape detection. He's forever being mistaken for other scions. He even fools a wiseacre detective (played with grinning menace by Willem Dafoe) who is breathing down the collar of his Cerruti shirt.
   Like "Fight Club," last year's cinematic study in violence and duality, "American Psycho" is smart enough to offer the audience a release valve. As Bateman's string of murders escalate from mere slice and dice to Grand Guignol, it starts to occur to him and to the viewer that it could all be some twisted fantasy. How else could he dispose of 40 bodies? Not to mention all those bloody designer sheets. A slick, clean, upscale serial killer as metaphor for the failures of the "Just say no" era. How perfect.
   Screenwriters Guinevere Turner (who also acts in the film) and Mary Harron (who also directed) have improved on Ellis' brand name-dropping, graphically violent novel by paring down the gore and infusing the talk with once-hip '80s-isms.
   "You look mahvelous," Bateman tells a drugged-out date.
   "Isn't that special?" she replies.
   Wit and satire
   By playing up the wit and social satire, and keeping the bloodletting at a distance, Turner and Herron save the film from turning into half-baked Hitchcock. (Bateman. Norman Bates. That's no accident.)
   And how brave is Bale to inhabit fully a difficult role other actors (including Mr. DiCaprio) were afraid to take a stab at. Bale, who's successfully buried his Englishness, plays Bateman as a junior Lester Burnham, narrating his shopping list of his life in ironic tones. The character symbolizes everything we don't miss about the '80s-the promiscuity, the greed, the lies. Tapes on Beta.
   Little touches make this movie a funny ride through a scary mind.
   In a bar scene, Bateman and his buddies swig "dry beers" and call for a "rez" at the cafe of the week on portable phones the size of shoeboxes. Suddenly one of the guys notices the TV airing a CNN clip of Ronald Reagan reciting his lies about Iran-Contra.
   Strange, but all these years later, the face of Reagan looks somehow surreal. But absolutely mahvelous.
   "American Psycho" is rated R for strong language, violence and sexual situations.
  
  

 
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