10 FIGHT CLUB 1999

I AM JACK’S PUNCH-DRUNK GLORY

EXPECTATION Brad, beats, bruises and… Bonham Carter? WTF? OMG In the exhilarating stand-off between Ed Norton’s wage-slave and Brad Pitt’s anarcho-punk, David Fincher’s riff on Chuck Palahniuk’s pulverising satire plunges us brazenly into messed-up millennial mindsets, where fantasy/reality divisions wobble like the 2008 economy. Never drearily literal, Club hits you like a state-of-the-art-of-darkness comic prophecy in psycho-drama drag.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT Pitt was revitalised, Fincher’s subversive renown grew, the DVD birthed cult acclaim, Incel types got it wrong, and many of its warnings came (too) true. “You met me at a very strange time in my life…”

The sound designers’ ‘punch library’ included baseball bats walloping walnut-stuffed poultry carcasses.