American Psycho.  Drama. Directed by Mary Harron.  Written by Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner, from the novel by Bret Easton Ellis.  Staring Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Jared Leto, Reese Witherspoon, Samantha Mathis.  Now playing at Bay Area Theaters.  Rated R for strong violence, sexuality, drug use and language. 

Patrick Bateman is 27 years old, rich, well-dressed, in great shape, a Master of Wall Street in the late eighties … and a serial killer.  In this chilling tale, Bateman (Christian Bale) moves through a world of glittering surfaces where the only substance is his murderous impulses. Under the hands of Mary Harron (also writer/director of “I Shot Andy Warhol”), Bret Easton Ellis’ violent, controversial novel is shaped into a still disturbing but more palatable satirical social commentary.

Bateman spends his days on Wall Street less concerned with wheeling and dealing than keeping up with the latest fashions in clothes and accessories, and getting reservations at the trendiest restaurants.  Nights are spent pursuing hard bodies, fueled by booze and cocaine, when he is not working out at the gym, taking care of his skin, or watching porn videos.  And every so often, torturing and killing streetwalkers, competitors, friends. 

The film opens in Bateman’s exclusive Upper West Side apartment, all sterile black and white.  His morning routine is accompanied by his running commentary endorsing various hair and skin products that maintain his perfect appearance.  Christian Bale (glam rocker in “Velvet Goldmine”) inhabits the soulless body of a man who claims, “I want to fit in” with a barely contained hysteria.  Everyone is a competitor or victim, someone to be manipulated and controlled. 

“American Psycho” has a tainted history.  Ellis’ first novel, “Less Than Zero,“ established him as king of the literary brat pack, chronicling the nihilistic, drug-wasted lives of a young lost generation in Los Angeles.  Ellis was paid a $300,000 advance for “American Psycho.”  But after news of the book’s violence and misogyny leaked out in the press, followed by protests from the National Organization of Women, Simon and Schuster and its parent Paramount Communications canceled the book one month before publication.  Sold to Vintage, it appeared as a trade paperback in 1991.  Ellis received more than a dozen anonymous death threats and canceled his promotional tour. 

Reviewers vilified the book, the New York Times headlining, “Snuff This Book!”  Admittedly the book is heavy going.  Bateman offers an endless litany of fashion comments, cataloging the designer provenance of every article of clothing worn by every person he encounters, down to the socks.  The flat, affectless tone of the sociopath is interrupted only by moments of surrealistic violence.

Thanks to Mary Harron and co-writer Guinevere Turner, the violence in the film occurs mostly off-camera.  The book is far more gruesome.  In Bateman’s first act of violence (occurring one-third of the way into the 400-page novel), he carves out the eyeballs of a homeless man, and a couple pages later, casually narrates, “I put on a new suit (by Cerrutti 1881), gave myself a pedicure and tortured to death a small dog I had bought earlier this week.”

Filming in Toronto came under pressure because notorious Canadian rapist and serial killer Paul Bernardo had owned a well-worn copy of  the book and a tabloid claimed it had inspired his crimes.  However, his crimes started years before publication, and the book belonged to his wife, an avid reader of true crime, while Bernardo was barely literate. 

Harron noted in a recent New York Times article, “Once you accept the idea that the representation of violence is in itself harmful to society, much of the finest world cinema could be banned….  This form of censorship, taken to its logical conclusion, clearly means the end of art.”  The filmmaker can have no control over how a member of the audience will receive it. 

Bateman takes an ax to his competitor, Paul Owen (Jared Leto), after which he appropriates his name and uses his apartment as a torture chamber.  But the viewer is spared various scenes in the novel involving nail guns and power drills, sawing off heads, killing a child at the zoo, and clinically detailed staged porno-style sex.

To give Bateman a bit of credit, he does occasionally tell his potential victims he wants to kill them. But as Bateman explains early on, “I simply am not there.”  One time at a bar, a young woman asks, “What line of work are you in?”  and he replies, “Murders and executions.”  She responds, “Do you like your work?  A lot of people in mergers and acquisitions don’t.” 

He even tries to explain to his fiance, Evelyn (Reese Witherspoon, “Pleasantville”) why he is breaking off their engagement.  Not because he is screwing her best friend, Courtney (Samantha Mathis), but that he has this “need to engage in homicidal behavior on a massive scale.”  But like everyone else in his world, at work or in his personal life, she is so absorbed in her own agenda she can’t hear.

Inevitably, the line between reality and fantasy begins to blur for Bateman.  But his camouflage works, he is opaque.  This film treads a thin line of social satire, dealing with nihilism rather than constructing a moralistic framework, but Mary Harron is able to maintain balance.  Neither Warhol nor his would-be assassin in “I Shot Andy Warhol” are sympathetic characters, but the film has its charms.  “American Psycho” could hardly be called charming, but love it or hate it, be forewarned that it will get under your skin.