The actor is a revelation as the status-minded sociopath. It's also difficult to imagine the film being as wickedly cutting had it been made by a director other than Mary Harron.

The satire in the script by Harron and Guinevere Turner is fairly simplistic.

Much of the humour derives from Patrick Bateman and his peers' fascination with status symbols.

But the writers go about it in an efficient, creative, and very funny way.

Such broad strokes threaten to make American Psycho cartoony, but Harron avoids that through her cast.

Willem Dafoe provides effective balance as a cop investigating the disappearance of one of Bateman's victims.

There's no denying, however, that the film belongs to Bale, who deftly plays his character as an exaggeration yet not a caricature.

Bateman's eccentricities, such as his pre-murder rant about the pop songs he uses as background music, are indeed comical.

Yet there's never anything inherently funny about the character himself, after all, he's a psychotic murderer.

Bale doesn't sugarcoat Bateman's murderous rages. His achievement is in suggesting so many more dimensions than his character would ever admit to having.

This is a violent and unsettling film, yet paradoxically one of its greatest achivements is the aesthetic beauty of every scene - it is truly a pleasure to watch - but be prepared to be very disturbed!

Natalie Stone