American Psycho is a 2000 movie directed by Mary Harron starring Christian Bale. It follows a young wealthy Wall Street executive who begins to commit a string of murders. This movie’s greatest asset is Christian Bales performance as Patrick Bateman. Other than that, everything else is basically average with this film.

Christian Bale is surprisingly great as the lead. He plays a Patrick Bateman very well, and makes the character extremely likable, despite his psychopathic tendencies. Nuances like discussing his taste in music with his victims really sell the character and make him interesting. He holds this entire film together and is easily the best part.

The rest of the film is kinda average in literally every other sense. Some of the acting is good, such as William Dafoe’s unnerving performance as a detective looking into Patrick’s murders. But some of it is really pretty bad, like the actress who plays Patrick’s secretary, she’s extremely boring and does basically nothing but read her lines. Also, other than Patrick, the audience really isn’t introduced to anyone. This movie moves along so fast that I can’t even remember anyone’s name other than Patrick’s. Granted, this isn’t a huge problem within this movie, as it really isn’t trying to make you invest in any character other than the main one. Still, it feels very jarring when the audience only knows one character in basically every scene.

The biggest problem with this movie, at least for me, is that the ending falls apart. After going on a murder spree with a gun that he seemingly pulls out of thin air, since the audience never saw it before, Patrick makes a confession to his lawyer on a phone. The next day he tries to talk to his lawyer about it, but his lawyer either covers for him, or he’s hallucinating. It really isn’t clear, and it makes you leave what otherwise was a fun movie, feeling pointless.

Overall, American Psycho is a violent yet entertaining movie with a very charismatic lead holding it all together. Sadly, everything outside of that lead feels painfully average. Still, if you’re into slasher flics or you like Christian Bale, you would probably like this movie. Unfortunately, I’m not particularly into either of those, so although I enjoyed Patrick Bateman as a character, I wasn’t a huge fan of this movie