Fight Club is, at first, a dark comedy about an individual lost in modern society. He lives in a condo, eats junk, and has an addiction to buying furniture - because what the hell else is he going to do with his money as a single, well-paid, obedient member of the middle class? He also develops insomnia and looks at the world through a very dark lens: flourescent lights in his office keeping everyone satiated like monkeys in a cage; constant caffeine and junk addiction with piles of trash all around; the false sheen of the world in the form of corporate offices and airports. There are some great one liners early on ("this is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time") and some very clever moves by director David Fincher to make this Chuck Palahniuk novel come to life on the screen. The little we learn of Jack's past seems to paint a picture of a generation, which makes for good metaphor and necessarily complicates Jack's character to make him more interesting.

The real fun, however, begins when our main character meets a fellow business traveler named Tyler Durden. Phase I of this mission of a film is to critique modern society lightly and playfully, while Jack (played wonderfully by Ed Norton) trudges through life and support groups he has no business going to, just so he can "cry and sleep". Phase II is the process of Tyler warming Jack up to the idea that there are more important things in life than lightly poking fun of society even while doing nothing about it, in classic hipster fashion, and asks Jack to do him one simple favor - "I want you to hit me as hard as you can." This blossoms into an underground movement of Jack-a-likes; business men who travel and deal with corporate nothingness all day who simply need to feel something real. Many of these followers, named "space monkeys" in hilarious fashion by Tyler, fall into line and do what they are told because they know that destroying modern society and following a strong leader for a worthy cause is much better than continuing to live with no goals and no leadership. As Tyler says - "we're the middle children of history, men - no purpose or place. We have no great war; no great depression..our great war's a spiritual war; our great depression, is our lives."

While entertaining in its own right, Fight Club ultimately fails to answer a question it can't help but pose to attentive viewers with its nihilistic attitude toward modern society: It's all well and good to destroy a society if people are so helpless that no other method will do (think the wonderful Ra's Al Ghul in Batman Begins) - but what then? The complete picture is outside the scope of the film and these questions are not answered, neither by Chuck Palahniuk (author of the novel), nor by David Fincher (director). It's too bad, because the film seems to almost get there but can't quite make the leap, focusing instead on the main character's ultimate decision to fix his own twisted mind instead of using the immense amount of energy he's built to help rebuild society. This film focuses entirely on the destruction of modern society while taking some fun jabs at it, and for those purposes, it's worth a watch - you'll find yourself rewatching it many times over the course of years, and thinking to yourself on what a society built by Jack and Tyler Durden would look like.