OK, let’s get the obvious joke out of the way at the start: the first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club.

But of course I’m going to anyway; let retribution follow where it may.

There’s a bit of a story around me watching this. I missed it entirely when it first came out, not sure why as I loved Se7en so the reunion of David Fincher and Brad Pitt should have been enticing. But I didn’t see it in the cinema, waited for the DVD to come out, put it on the shelves and promptly did nothing. Every once in a while when the Book God and I were trying to decide on a Saturday night movie I would suggest this and he would pull a face and back on the shelf it would go. I thought I was getting close to persuading him to watch it with me but then there was the Twelve Monkeys incident and I thought I might be pushing it too far.

Two things then happened: Silvery Dude’s jaw nearly hit the floor when I told him I’d never seen this, and I developed a serious girl-crush on Helena Bonham-Carter. Add to that an evening home alone when the Book God was out socialising and the time had clearly come to give it a whirl. And the question that immediately sprang to mind was why had I waited so long because this is seriously brilliant.

I’m not going anywhere near the plot because you either saw it ages ago, you are never, ever going to see it in a million years, or you are and I don’t want to spoil it even a tiny bit. Just some observations:

  • “I know this because Tyler knows this”
  • Meat Loaf – who knew?
  • Step forward into your cave
  • “My suitcase was vibrating?”
  • the liposuction thing – urgh!
  • “Trust me, everything is going to be fine”

It’s worth noting that because this film has been around for so long I had a pretty clear idea about the central conceit. I wonder what it would have been like to watch it without any idea of what was going to happen; the construction of the film is so clever that I would have liked to have experienced it cold. But there you go, that’s what happens when you watch a seminal film 12 years after it was made.

One of the most amusing things about having confessed my sin is the reaction of others; one colleague (he knows who he is) saw my admission on Facebook and is still shaking his head in disbelief.

So if you haven’t seen it and are into the whole anarchy thing then don’t be afraid, it’s never too late.

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