Plot
Patrick Bateman is a wealthy investment banker living in Manhattan in the late-1980s. His life revolves around dining at trendy restaurants while keeping up appearances for his fiancée, Evelyn, and his circle of equally wealthy, shallow friends, most of whom he dislikes. However, he also leads a secret life in which he commits rape, torture, and murder.
Throughout the film, Bateman describes the material accoutrements of his lifestyle: his daily morning exercise and beautification routine; his music collection, including artists such as Huey Lewis and the News and Whitney Houston; his taste for expensive designer clothes; and the lavish couture of his apartment. In one scene, Bateman and his associates flaunt their business cards in a display of utter vanity. After becoming captivated by Paul Allen's card, he murders a homeless man and his dog in an alleyway in a fit of frustrated rage.
At a Christmas party, Bateman makes plans to have dinner with Paul, who had earlier mistaken him for a comparable associate named Marcus. Bateman gets Paul drunk and lures him back to his apartment. While playing "Hip to Be Square", Bateman ambushes Paul and murders him with an axe. Bateman disposes of Paul's body, then goes to his apartment to stage the situation so that others believe Paul has run off to London. After Paul's family becomes suspicious of his disappearance, Bateman is met by Donald Kimball, a detective searching for the truth regarding his whereabouts.
Bateman then has a violent threesome with two prostitutes, whom he names "Christie" and "Sabrina". The two women leave his apartment bruised and bloodied. The next day, his colleague Luis Carruthers reveals his new business card, sending Bateman over the edge. Bateman tries to kill Luis in the restroom of an expensive restaurant, but cannot bring himself to strangle him. Luis mistakes the attempted murder for a sexual advance and declares his love for Bateman, who flees in a panic.
After murdering a model, Bateman invites his secretary, Jean, to dinner, suggesting she meet him at his apartment for drinks beforehand. When Jean arrives, Bateman, unbeknownst to Jean, holds a nail gun to the back of her head while the two converse. However, upon receiving an answering machine message from his fiancée, he decides not to kill Jean and asks her to leave before she gets "hurt".
Following another luncheon with Kimball, Patrick has a threesome with his old friend Elizabeth and Christie at Paul's apartment. While having sex, Christie realizes that Bateman has murdered Elizabeth and tries to flee. While attempting to escape, she discovers multiple female corpses and words such as "Die Yuppie Scum" scrawled on the walls in blood. Bateman then murders her with a chainsaw by dropping it down a flight of stairs onto her as she attempts to run.
A few months later, Bateman abruptly breaks off his engagement with Evelyn. That night, he finds a kitten as he uses an ATM, then imagines that the display reads "Feed me a stray cat." Bateman is stopped by a woman, whom he murders instead. A police chase ensues, but Bateman destroys the police cars by shooting their gas tanks, causing explosions that kill the pursuing officers. He then attempts to flee to his office, but he accidentally enters the wrong office building, murdering a security guard and a janitor in the process. Upon reaching his office he calls his lawyer, Harold, and leaves a lengthy answering machine message, confessing most of his murders in-detail.
The following morning, Bateman visits Paul's apartment, finding it completely vacant and being offered for sale. The real estate broker views him as an intruder and tells him to leave immediately. As Bateman goes to meet with his colleagues and lawyer, Jean finds detailed drawings of murder and rape in Bateman's office journal.
At the same time, Bateman sees Harold at a restaurant with his friends, and tries to convince him that he is Patrick Bateman and a serial killer. However, Harold mistakes him for another colleague named Davis and laughs off the confession as a joke. He also denies that Paul was murdered, claiming to have had dinner with him in London only 10 days before. Bateman realizes that he will continue to escape the punishment he deserves. He laments that there has been no catharsis and that he still remains a mystery to himself. Although he regrets that nothing has been gained, he still wants his pain to be inflicted on others. He finishes his inner monologue by stating, "This confession has meant nothing."
Read more about this topic: American Psycho (film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)