Grade: B-

Verdict: A sly but not completely successful film version of the controversial book.

Details: Starring Christian Bale and Chloe Sevigny. Rated R for strong violence, sexuality, drug use and profanity. 1 hour, 40 minutes.

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Review: Reshaping and streamlining Bret Easton Ellis' infamous novel, the makers of "American Psycho" almost convince you that the book really was what Ellis always claimed: a blackly comic satire about Valentino-clad Young Turks of the 1980s "making a killing" on Wall Street — in particular Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), who takes that expression literally.

Director Mary Harron ("I Shot Andy Warhol") has created a visually chilly but often very funny satire of American greed and conspicuous consumption. It's a critique of '80s me-first narcissism, embodied by an antihero whose refined taste in clothing and health care products is matched by his extensive repertoire as a killer.

The movie cleverly fuses his death-lust and '80s lifestyle in the opening credits. Droplets of what appear to be blood turn out to be part of the coulis surrounding one of the minimalist entrees being served then by the trendiest Manhattan restaurants. (Nailing a reservation at these ultrachic bistros is treated as a life-or-death struggle among Patrick and his fellow Wall Streeters.)

Patrick is yuppie scum in the worst way, a pinstriped preppie who keeps his ax as shiny as his chrome-and-leather living room furniture. Before he sinks that ax into a colleague's head, he makes sure the floor is neatly covered with blood-absorbing pages of The New York Times' Arts & Leisure sections.

Patrick gears up for bloodshed by launching into soliloquies about his favorite middlebrow musicians. You could argue that his murders are mercy killings: After all, they put his victims out of the misery of having to listen any more to his musings on the musical significance of Huey Lewis and the News' "Hip to Be Square" or Whitney Houston's "The Greatest Love."

The film's slick, monochromatic set design creates a world of surfaces that seem designed to repel anything like comfort or emotion. You could say it's a place that forces Patrick to find emotional release by piercing another sort of surface, human skin, and drawing blood.

When not abusing (or killing) prostitutes, the only time Patrick's pulse seems to rise is when his taste and status are questioned — when a rival's apartment turns out to have a better view, say, or he realizes that his business cards aren't as impressive as a friend's.

Bale plays Patrick with a gleeful, aggressive insincerity, as if daring the world to discover his pathology. When an acquaintance spots him at the dry cleaners carrying bloody sheets, he glibly says, "It's cranberry juice." In a running joke, he repeatedly confesses his crimes, but his listeners always manage to miss or misinterpret his words. (When he says, "I like to dissect girls," he has to be speaking metaphorically, right?)

Bale is very good, though his performance is almost upstaged by his gym work: His ripped-and-pumped body is shot with the same chilly reverence as the other material objects in the characters' swank apartments.

Screenwriters Harron and Guinevere Turner (who turns up onscreen in an amusing, snotty cameo) pare down the detailed torture and gore of Ellis' book, which made it unreadable for some. The film sustains a fine balancing act for much of its running time, mixing the darkest humor with moments of genuine suspense and terror. The strong supporting cast includes Reese Witherspoon as Patrick's spoiled fiancee, Samantha Mathis as his overmedicated mistress and Chloe Sevigny as his smitten assistant; Sevigny's sweetly vulnerable presence gives the movie vital warmth. There's also strong work from Cara Seymour as a hard-luck hooker.

Unfortunately, Harron and Turner's savvy adaptation stumbles badly at the end. The problem is it doesn't really have one, but instead a series of anticlimaxes. They want us to be left with ambiguity — did Patrick really kill so many people, or has he just imagined it all? It's almost as bad as the hoary it-was-all-a-dream solution.

The fault lies with Ellis' book, ultimately as stylish and as empty as the label-mad society it depicts. "There is no real me, only an entity," Patrick says in the film. "I simply am not there." That's the crucial problem of the movie. It's not really possible to create meaning while circling a void.

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service