A second after the copyright warning at the start of the film, another warning appears, for a second -- a warning from Tyler Durden.

"If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this is useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all who claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think everything you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told you should want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned... Tyler'

Imagine running into an instigator like that on a plane next to you. Especially since you had already "become a slave," a fact gleaned from one look around your picture-perfect Ikea furnished apartment.

In an astonishingly lyrical look at the fatality of comsumerism, Fincher shows us Edward Norton sitting on the toilet, ordering furniture from a catalogue while the house is looked at in panorama, furniture popping up as it is mentioned, complete with catalogue-style prices and feature-listings. And through this clean and orderly life-for-sale walks Norton the unnamed Narrator, defined only by his choices.

Brad Pitt plays Tyler Durden, a soap salesman. He's an off-the-wall troublemaker with anarchy in his every word, and he convinces the jaded and apathetic Norton to collaborate with him to create a fight club, one where numb penpushers batter each other up to feel something.

The cult spreads quickly and grows rapidly into a monster, one that heads more towards anti-capitalism terrorism than plain punches in the mouth.

Chuck Palahniuk's novel was plainly declared unfilmable before Fincher brought it all together with this remarkable pulp success, and he nailed it with all the force of a haymaker.

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