(Directed by David Fincher. Staring Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf Aday, Jared Leto, Zach Grenier. Based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk)

If you haven't seen this film by now it may be because you thought it's nothing more than a violent movie about bare knuckle beat-em-up and little else. WRONG!

Many critics raved about this movie. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called it "a true American classic." Others, like Alexander Walker of This Is London, declared it "irresponsible" and "anti-society, anti-capitalist, and...anti-God."
Fight Club is indeed anti-society and anti-capitalist - a dark nihilistic and subversive fantasy, depicting an improbable uprising against the powers-that-be and things-as-they-are. The media and our elders keep telling us that each of us is special, each of us can make a difference, and all of us can realize our dreams–while at the same time telling us to express our individuality by buying dining sets and khaki pants. Fight Club informs us that we've been lied to. "You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake," we are informed. "We are all the part of the same compost heap."

At the beginning of Fight Club, the unnamed narrator is cracking up. His job is meaningless, his life is empty, and his attempts to fill it by accumulating stuff - Ikea furniture, Calvin Klein clothes - are failing. His constant travelling, and acute insomnia, mean he's no longer sure where, why, or who he is anymore.

He attempts to fill the void by attending support group meetings for diseases - testicular
cancer, brain parasites - he doesn't have. There, cocooned by the suffering of the other
members, he finds peace, and is able to sleep again. But the peace is shattered when another 'tourist' starts attending meetings. Now he can't release his emotions because the presence of another spectator makes him conscious of his own deception - and the insomnia returns. Until he meets Tyler Durden.

Tyler is everything he isn't - worldly-wise, good-looking, and amoral. And so when he returns home to find his apartment ('his life') destroyed by a gas leak, he moves in to Tyler's dilapidated squat, a million miles from his plush apartment. And together they start Fight Club. Fight Club starts small. After a night's drinking, both realise that they've never been in a fight, and trade punches. It's painful, but the pain - unlike his job, his furniture, his whole life - is real and immediate. Soon the fights become the focus of their lives, and others, seeing them, want to join.

For its members, Fight Club is a liberation. They don't fight because of any grudges they hold, or for the victory. The fight itself is all that concerns them - a few minutes of direct experience, not bought or sold, not analysed or mediated, but real pain, authentic emotion. For the rest of the week they have boring and meaningless jobs, bossed around by their superiors, but for one night a week they are all equals. And because of that night of intensity and adrenaline, everything else becomes controllable - your boss is no longer intimidating when he is just another potential opponent.

As Fight Club grows, with more and more members and branches appearing all over the country, so do Tyler's ambitions. The focus of the club shifts from the fights, and towards attacks on the corporate society that created it. Advertisements are subverted, corporate art and fast food chains vandalised, until the final attack on the headquarters of the major credit card companies, an attempt to wipe everyone's slate clean.

All idylls must end though, and the seeds of destruction are sown by the charismatic Tyler's increasing control over the group. The fighters feel real when they fight, but it's a reality that strips away their individuality. Their equality is fake - Tyler is always the leader. This becomes more obvious as Fight Club becomes Project Mayhem, where the first rule is not to ask questions. Rather than being shorn of their inhibitions and neuroses, these men are slowly replacing their dependence on consumerist society with dependence on Durden himself.

Fight Club is an anarchist inspiration to some, fascist propaganda to others, and it's easy to see why opinions are divided. It's an attack on the emptiness of consumerism, the way society robs us of real choice, the void at the heart of capitalism.

(most of this review was taken from  http://www.ainfos.ca/00/oct/ainfos00273.html)