What happened?
Apparently Redford was not quite ready to give up this mantle and Pitt blinked when it came to being a legitimate acting talent.
How else to explain the films and movies he has willingly appeared in for the past several years, including his latest, "Fight Club"?
"Fight Club" is homoerotic male macho porn.
Beyond that definitive pronouncement, there isn't much to this mindless dreck.
Allow me to begin at the beginning. Edward Norton stars in "Fight Club" as a depressed, self-loathing urbanite. A loner overflowing with angst. As the overall narrator of "Fight Club" he describes his life, his reality, his world in monochromatic tones, supposedly meant as social satire which is actually sado-masochistic Nazism for aspiring brownshirts. His job, a certain dead-end, makes him crazy, frustrated, and apparently impotent.
As a means of dealing with the mess his life is he seeks out 12-step meetings when he can meet and hug people who are truly less fortunate than himself and find sadistic satisfaction in their pain and suffering.
I noted before that this is homoerotic male macho porn. It is, and this is established in the first meeting Norton attends: A support group for post-surgical victims of testicular cancer: An ironic sick joke of sorts that acts as prelude to the rest of the movie: Guys fearing the lost of their balls (masculinity?).
Is Norton, the narrator, a closet homosexual? It is never made apparent. He has homoerotic tendencies, but the issue is clouded over when he starts taking notice of a woman named Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) who, like himself, goes from one meeting to another. Is she a lesbian? Is she a woman? Is she a male strong female? It doesn't seem to matter, really. She is, for a moment, a sex toy to amuse him in his fake pain.
The issue of homoeroticism is forced home (in case, to this point, you have missed its presence) when the Narrator meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a pretty boy toy who talks like a used car salesman but who comes across most definitely as a pimp of sorts. He says things that appeal to the Narrator and before long the Narrator finds himself on the ground floor of a secret society for men called "Fight Club" who find freedom (supposedly) and self-realization (supposedly) by beating each other up.
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