“Fight Club” is a confusing and twisted ride from director David Fincher (“Alien 3”, “Panic Room”) and starring Edward Norton (“American History X”) and Brad Pitt (“Meet Joe Black”). Fincher and Pitt worked together on the gruesome crime thriller “Se7en”, which was a movie I really didn’t care for, so I was surprised by how much better “Fight Club” is.

An insomniac officer worker (Norton) spends his time attending support groups to benefit from the pain of others when disaster strikes, rendering him homeless. He befriends a soap maker by the name of Tyler Durden (Pitt) and the two form the underground ‘Fight Club’, which soon becomes something much, much more sinister.

Edward Norton gives a really great performance as the unnamed main character. I’m not a fan of Brad Pitt and I probably would have preferred somebody else in the role but he does a decent job. The interactions and the relationship between the two characters are very, very interesting. Helena Bonham Carter (“The King’s Speech”) does a good job as Marla. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the other characters and I thought testicular cancer survivor played by Meat Loaf was just strange.

“Fight Club” has some really interesting ideas but it isn’t a flawless masterpiece as there are some noticeable problems. These problems include some of the explanations near the end of the movie being a little too convenient and while I think the film’s twist is genuinely quite clever, the very last few minutes of the movie are a little underwhelming. “Fight Club” sort-of reminded me of “Barton Fink” in the way that it creates tension and the battered house where much of the picture takes place, made me think of the peeling wallpaper in “Barton Fink”. This is an unusual movie with some clever filmmaking tricks thrown in (such as the single frames inserted throughout the film), Norton’s performance is fascinating and the direction of the story is very creative at times.