American Psycho 2000

Tom Long, Detroit News: Well-filmed, well-acted and certainly riveting, American Psycho nonetheless is a movie without heart about a man without heart. Read more

John Hartl, Seattle Times: Just doesn't make the case that this book was worth filming. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: Wickedly funny when it bares its fangs. Read more

Stephen Holden, New York Times: At the heart of the film is a star-making performance by the handsome Welsh actor Christian Bale. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: By no means a crowd pleaser, but it uses intelligent satire to make a pungent statement about the shallowness of modern society. Read more

Steve Murray, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: A visually chilly but often very funny satire of American greed and conspicuous consumption. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Stillborn, pointless piece of work. Read more

Lisa Alspector, Chicago Reader: The slick satire cleverly equates materialism, narcissism, misogyny, and classism with homicide, but you may laugh so loud at the protagonist that you won't be able to hear yourself laughing with him. Read more

Louis B. Parks, Houston Chronicle: The movie is not comedy, but it is joyously mean and evil, somewhat in the tone of Blue Velvet. Read more

Paul Clinton (CNN.com), CNN.com: American Psycho is seamless in its inability to engage emotionally, message or no message. Read more

Steven Rosen, Denver Post: Entertaining and amusing. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Funny, pungent, and weirdly gripping. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: A well-crafted yet essentially innocuous period piece. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: At once a sharp satire and an earnest study in the deadly consequences of moral vacancy. Read more

David Ansen, Newsweek: Conceptually, this savage cartoon ends up as trapped in surfaces as its shallow antihero: it's all dressed up with nowhere to go. Read more

Peter Rainer, New York Magazine/Vulture: Clearly, Harron is sold on the Bateman-as-metaphor bit, and, like Ellis, she overconceptualizes everything. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: It represents one of the most daring, inventive, and invigorating movies to reach the screen during the dreary first half of 2000. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Christian Bale is heroic in the way he allows the character to leap joyfully into despicability; there is no instinct for self-preservation here, and that is one mark of a good actor. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: Toothless and empty. Read more

Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle: Funny-one-minute, horrifying-the-next film. Read more

David Edelstein, Slate: American Psycho is nearly perfect for what it is, but before we go on, we should ask what that actually amounts to. Can something with so rigid a thesis be a real work of art? Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: It needs to be seen and appreciated, like a serpent in a glass cage. Read more

Time Out: The film makes wonderfully unsettling entertainment; crucially -- and gloriously -- Bale nails Bateman with a sublimely dead-eyed and deadpan performance. Read more

Dennis Harvey, Variety: Harron's Psycho reps an impressive reclaiming of dubious material. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: As the antihero himself sneers at the bloody finale, 'This confession has meant nothing.' It's a form of poetic justice that American Psycho would be impaled on its own point. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: It's hard to summon up enthusiasm for a performance so rooted in bloody banality. I mean, as Patrick, Bale's most emotionally pressing dilemma is: Chainsaw or butcher knife? Read more