American Psycho (2000)

Synopsis- By day, a slick banker Christian Bale lives a life of excess and style but, by night he lets his murderous alter-ego out to play. 2000, 97 minutes.

- Patrick (main character) is a 27 year old banker who works on Wall St New York.- 3 minutes into the film a bar waitress is slightly rude to him (not majorly) and when

she turns around he says (knowing she can’t hear him) ‘You’re an ugly, stupid, bitch. I want to stab you to death and play around in your blood’ immediately getting his alter ego showing.

- He has vigorous body hygiene and cleaning routines; using so many products – he lists where they are from and what they do. Constantly name dropping his items as if to brag to the camera (done via voice over). Ironic in comparison to his late night hobbies.

- His apartment is completely white, barely any other colour, always immaculate and clean. Links to his OCD of keeping clean.

- Only ever appears in a tailored suit, tie, and brogues with slicked back hair.- It mentions how his father owns the company that he works for and he expresses to

his fiancé that he hates it but he just wants to ‘fit in’. Showing that he is a sheep and tries to follow the crowd, attempting to out stage them at their own game – competitiveness is off the scale.

- Via the voice over it expresses that he is aware his fiancé is having an affair, yet he doesn’t seem to care – this is unusual considering how competitive he is. Yet it also reveals that he is having one too; with the wife of a man that he works with. Both his fiancé and mistress are blonde. The man he works with being the only red head in the film.

- He refers to his mistress as ‘almost perfect looking’ he cannot fully compliment anyone due to his extreme need to be the best.

- He tells his secretary, Jean, what to wear if he doesn’t like her outfit and orders her around like a dog, she too is blonde. And he treats her just as poorly as the other women in the film.

- He takes heavily blood stained sheets to the dry cleaners (before we see him kill anyone) and shouts and screams at the owners for saying they won’t be able to get the stain out. He doesn’t try to hide the stains he opens the sheets and shoves them in her face. A woman he knows comes in asking what they are, he says ‘Cranberry juice’ then arrogantly denies a lunch date with her and leaves. This shows that he thinks he is invincible as he doesn’t care who sees they all believe his story anyway, and he isn’t bothered that it looks suspicious.

- He rings his mistress asking to take her out for food. She is heavily intoxicated on prescription medication – which she abuses – and agrees anyway. He picks her up in a car, takes her out and tells her what she will be eating and that she will enjoy it. He likes the sense of control and power that he has on her and doesn’t seem fazed by the fact that she is passing out over the table and slumping back in her chair – which is unusual considering his need to appear perfect and come across as the best.

- The husband to his mistress compliments his suit, and goes to stroke it. Patrick smacks his hand away before he gets chance and threatens him.

- All of the men in the board room get out their business cards and show each other as a form of competition – starting with Patrick as an attempt to boast. When he prefers someone else’s card he gets really mad, starts sweating and getting aggressive. We only hear this over the voice over and don’t see it on film.

- We see his alter-ego when he walks past a homeless man, acting lovely and offering him money – which the homeless man refuses and starts being weary. Then he tells him he has no life, he needs to get a job, and that he is worthless. The homeless man at this point is begging for his help, and Patrick opens his briefcase, pulls out a knife, stabs him to death and then kicks his dog to death too, walking off casually like nothing had every happened and not even trying to cover his act.

- There is a man whom he works with, who is always polite and asks him every time they meet how his fiancé is in an attempt at being courteous. Patrick meets him for dinner, gets him drunk and takes him home.

- There is pre planned sheets on the chair with newspaper on the floor. The man sits on the chair highly intoxicated without even realising.

- Patrick put on music – loudly – which he does very often as it fuels any of his current moods. Either via stereo or headphones.

- He puts on a see through rain coat over his suite, calls him names, calls his actual name and then we see an axe drop onto him. This is then expressed by happiness with the loud music and choice of song in the background. In which gets him really excited and hyper active before killing his work friend.

- Again with no attempt to cover his steps he drags the body through his apartment lobby in a duffle bag – name dropped as Ralph Lauren, with blood leaking out all over the floor. The concierge doesn’t take any notice and the body is shoved into the back of his car. Very little lack of care or awareness at his crimes and trying to cover them up.

- In an attempt to hide his murder – very unusual for his character – he enters the man’s house, packs his bags and changes his answer phone ring to tell people he’s gone to London for a few days – without any attempt at putting on a fake voice or anything.

- The first thing he says about this man’s apartment is that its nicer than his and more expensive as it looks over the park – which fuels his anger, and he has to calm down. Narcissistic behaviour.

- Picks up a prostitute – traditional horror film technique showing that women are dispensable. He gives her the name Christy and makes her answer to it to feed his fantasy. He rings up another one and makes her answer to Sabrina. And he calls himself Paul – which is the name of the man he killed.

- He puts on music yet again that suits his mood at the time. - On the phone he stresses that the prostitute he ordered must be blonde. So is the

one he picked up, and his girlfriend, his secretary and his mistress. - He instructs them very harshly and imperatively and gets them to take their clothes

off and do things.- He films it and makes his own tape, posing in the mirror the whole time to feed his

self-loving obsession. It is also a replica of a ‘film’ he was watching earlier on in the background.

- Round a table his work colleagues belittle women, speak about them, and put them down, all the time laughing at it and joking between each other.

- After his mistresses red head boyfriend turns up and shows them his new business card, and it is better than Patricks, he follows him into the bathroom, with leather gloves on, goes up behind him and grabs his neck as if to strange him – out in the open not even trying to hide it – showing his every growing confidence.

- However, the man thinks he is coming on to him and starts flirting, asking him why he hasn’t told him before, this really disorientates and confuses Patrick and he exists the toilets disturbed and walks straight out of the restaurant.

- His mistress acts really childish and naïve – still has a stuffed toy on her bed. - Patrick started to take drugs in the toilets on a night out – very unlike his obsessive

cleaning health and body routines.- He tells a group of girls that he is trying to chat up that he is interested in murders,

and they laugh it off thinking he is joking – again blonde.- He takes a blonde model back in a taxi and the next shot is of his sat in his office

chair at work sniffing a strand of her hair. - He asks his assistant – jean, also blonde – out on a date, and gets her to meet him at

his house with a change of clothes. - He offers her something from the freezer and when she accepts we see him open it

with a blonde girls head in a bag inside. - Jean is desperate for attention off him.- He goes to kill her from behind, but he is hesitant. The phone rings and the

answering machine gets it. It’s his girlfriend - after stirring on whether to stay or go, Jean leaves and doesn’t get killed.

- He goes back to the blonde prostitute and offers her more money. She refuses to start with cos she said he sent her to A and E last time and she needs an operation – and that she may get a lawyer involved, so he writes her a check and she gets in the car, shows how desperate she is and that she needs the money.

- The other woman he invites over this time is a redhead, but she is a family friend. He starts to suggest certain activities and she thinks he is joking.

- After getting them drunk and getting their consent the three of them are in bed, and the prostitute finds a gap in time to attempt to leave the room and get her things to leave – at this time showing initiative and bravery which we don’t see through the film so far, from any of the women.

- We see the sheets turn red with blood and know what Patrick has done, coming up with blood on his face and a dazed look we see the alter ego come out – which adds to the insanity of the situation.

- The prostitute runs and we see her screaming trying to get away – this shows less common sense as he is then able to locate her whereabouts yet she doesn’t keep quiet. And she keeps running into dead bodies – all again of blonde women. This could show a lack of instinct as none of them were able to escape or get away – linking back to the stereotyping of blondes.

- We hear him revving a chain saw and see him, naked yet wearing trainers chase her towards the fire escape – he could be wearing trainers to show the contrast of his two lives – they were still completely white with no blood stains and served their purpose – yet he isn’t.

- He shouts and screams at her while she is running in a successful attempt to scare and intimidate her – this is against his natural behaviour to be easily embarrassed when someone causes a scene.

- He drops the chainsaw at the right time for it to land in her, making her attempt at escape pointless. He knew that this would work as he made no other attempt to follow her or chase after her. This shows the male dominance and power as opposed to women throughout the film.

- The fact that he kills a redhead shows that he is breaking his pattern – also linking to taking drugs as it is a break in his OCD routine. This also shows a grow in confidence and naivety that he can literally ‘get away with murder’.

- We then see him normally out for dinner where he is with his fiancé, he tells her it’s over and she thinks he is joking – typical stereotype again of blondes – and says he must be because they have the same friends. This also makes women appear shallow and egotistical within that social setting, as well as a classic ‘dumb blonde’.

- Once she realises he isn’t joking and starts getting upset – he leaves because he is making a scene – contradictory of the previous scene – and says he has to return some video tapes (same excuse as he gave the privet investigator).

- In a rage on the way back, we see a kitten next to him at an ATM and it says on the screen ‘Insert kitten’ this is the first time that we actually see evidence of his schizophrenic personality and can see that he actually believes what he is seeing. We then see an old lady – stereotypical nice old woman, who tries to stop him from killing the kitten – he then shoots her and goes on a killing frenzy around New York.

- This also shows his lack of responsibility as he doesn’t think he’ll get caught – he runs around running away from the police that never seem to catch him and kills everyone he sees on the way.

- We see him make a phone call to his lawyer – a confession which he later on says is pointless cos he doesn’t feel any different – where he is frantic and sweating ridiculously, makes us see other feelings which only arise when he thinks he may get caught.

- The next morning he see him sneak into an apartment (where there was two blonde girls hanging up dead in the closet- that the prostitute found whilst trying to escape) and open the closet – nothing is in there and he is highly confused.

- A woman – older and grey haired that he shows no interest in killing for the first time in about the past 15 minutes of the film – who is doing an open house says that nothing has happened and asks him to leave – which is the first time he follows an order from a woman – a collapse in his behaviour.

- He then goes and meets his work friends, in the same restaurant as usual and sees his lawyer – goes over to him and he thinks it’s a joke about what he said on the phone the night before.

- Patrick gets even more confused and for the first time admits it to someone’s face that he killed Paul and liked it – to which his reply was /that’s impossible, I had lunch with him in London 10 days ago’.

- An end twist on the film that plays on us psychologically by getting into the head and mind set of a ‘killer’.