American Psycho - Book to Movie Adaptation

                Starting off with some background, if I may. American Psycho, the novel, is about a man named Patrick Bateman. He is of the elite, working on Wall Street by day, and brutally killing innocent people by night. He kills out of pure hatred for the world he lives in and he kills anyone who lives a life he doesn’t agree with. Horrible. I know.

                Now that the background is covered I can talk about my feelings right? Comparing book to movie, which did I like better? The film. Not surprising for me, I am usually partial to film. The movie was over all much more comical than the book was. Not to make light of what Bateman was doing, or to render it as acceptable. But to make the horrible deeds done in the book slightly more tolerable in the on-screen adaptation. I can understand that some fans of the book would argue they left important aspects out of the movie that were in the book. But on the contrary, when you pay close attention in the movie the screenwriters did a really good job incorporating some of the more violent scenes in a less heated manner in the film.

                An example is one of the more controversial scenes in the novel where Bateman kills “some old fa*ot with a dog”. Book fans say it was overlooked in the movie and should have been included but when you pay attention, in the film when Jean finds Bateman’s notebook, the doodles in the book are doodles of the murders that actually happened in the book. As I said, a way to incorporate the well-known violent scenes in a less harsh manner.

                The book is really, really, really graphic. And at some points I think it’s a little much to say the least. I think the movie did a fine job pulling the overarching theme and making it presentable to the public which is all you can ask for when giving such vulgarity to start with.