Bret Easton Ellis considered his controversial novel unfilmable but boy did writer-director Mary Harron prove him wrong. David Cronenberg, Stuart Gordon, and Oliver Stone, among others, were each separately eyeing the project before Harron stepped in and made it her own. And basically every hot young late-'90s leading man was considered for the titular psycho before the role fell to the lesser-known Christian Bale. And does he ever rip into the material, giving an instantly iconic performance as investment banker Patrick Bateman. Chiseled from marble and just as cold and dead inside, Bale's Bateman is the grinning embodiment of Reagan-era capitalist avarice.
Bateman leads a double life, meticulously maintaining a polished social façade while harboring dark impulses. By day, he dines at trendy restaurants, obsesses over his physical appearance, and navigates a shallow circle of wealthy associates he secretly despises; by night, he commits heinous acts of violence. But where does one masquerade end and the other begin? Bale went full method for the coveted role, drawing inspiration from Nicolas Cage's performance in Vampire's Kiss, for one, as well as Tom Cruise interviews on Late Night with David Letterman. And never broke character on set.
Harron was ahead of the curve in her use of the weaponized ironic pop song, prominently featuring cuts from Huey Lewis and the News and Phil Collins, which are undercut by a melancholy score by Velvet Underground maestro John Cale. The stacked cast includes indie stalwarts—Willem Defoe, Matt Ross—and up-and-coming A-listers—Bale, Reese Witherspoon, Chloë Sevigny, Jared Leto, Justin Theroux. But this is Harron's show and the film is nothing if not a feat of adaptation, taking cues from Mario Bava's giallo films and turning Ellis' repugnant sort-of satire into something far more ambiguous, farcical, frightening, and enduring.