This movie is not new by any means. It comes from a time when most people had no idea who Christian Bale actually was and he was new on the scene. This movie was actually considering hiring DiCaprio for the lead and in the end decided to go with Bale, which I think was a very good move.
I believe it is one of the best Bale films out there and it is absolutely filled with one-liners that you are going to want to use with strangers to determine if they are cool or not.
[src](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1148/8924/products/MPW-114774-a_1024x1024.jpg?v=1571439885)Originally released 20 years ago in a distant time we like to call the turn of the millennium. I was alive on both sides of this thing and actually read the Bret Easton's book by the same name sometime in the middle of the 90's. As legend has it, Oliver Stone (who was the original choice for director of this film) actually really wanted Leo for this role but Leo ended up choosing to do The Beach instead, which is a terrible movie of monumental proportions. When DiCaprio bailed (pun intended,) Stone also did so and relatively unknown director Mary Harron took over and Christian was cast in the lead role of Patrick Bateman.
Thank goodness it happened though because Christian Bale's performance in this film is nothing short of extraordinary.
This movie is all about what all college graduates aspire to. You are successful, you are rich, you are good-looking and you work really hard to ensure that all of these things remain in place. You appear happy to everyone that knows you yet on the inside you are terribly unhappy with your life to the point where you start to nitpick things that other people would consider to be of little consequence and they drive you crazy if they aren't "just so."
Is this a case of the career driving the person insane or the insane person being duly qualified for the position based on his insanity? The movie doesn't talk about this directly but it has you thinking about it after the fact.
Christian Bale didn't receive a great deal of praise for this role and sadly, it wasn't until directing hack Christopher Nolan got a hold of him for Batman that Bale's true potential was recognized / realized by the movie-making machine that is Hollywood.
[src](https://theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/American-Psycho-Christian-Bale-750x400.jpg)In American Psycho, Patrick Bateman seems to be the type of person that everyone would admire and in many ways that is exactly what is happening. Yet Bateman's own overly criticizing manner about everything in life... which is what has made him successful in the first place, drives him to be overly successful about things outside of work including himself and everyone that he works around and with.
Not only does Bale do an incredible job of playing the gradually-slipping-into-complete-madness role of Patrick extremely well but since he is in charge of a great deal of the narration, he nails that as well.
I don't want to reveal too much about the plot of this movie because there are some key moments that you will not see coming. Some of them were so shocking and graphic that the film was heavily censored or even banned outright in many countries around the world because this is the quintessential "glorification of violence film" if there ever was one.
Somehow, most people haven't seen this film but it is on Netflix now and honestly, I would bypass a great deal of the new releases (because most of them are awful) and instead head straight towards this gem from 20 years ago. If you end up regretting it, I would be genuinely surprised.
Should I watch it?
Absolutely. This is a film that I go back to and re-watch many times and when I meet people that have no idea that Bale was an actor prior to Batman I have to send them straight to this. It didn't make a ton of money because it was just too violent for the people in the year 2000. As long as you aren't going to be bothered by that, this movie is just so much better than 90% of anything Bale has been in ever since.
