American Psycho by Stephen Farber Director Mary Harron takes a sardonic view of the opposite sex in American Psycho, which uses Bret Easton Ellis's controversial novel about a yuppie serial killer as a springboard for a satiric skewering of male egotism. American Psycho doesn't have anything resembling a male role model. Quite the opposite. Harron and her cowriter, Guinevere Turner, set out to expose the misogynistic heart of darkness in the contemporary breed of men who see themselves as masters of the universe (to borrow Tom Wolfe's phrase for business honchos of the '80s). The antihero, Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), is meant to embody every despicable trait of the Wall Street shark whose only goal is conquest. He's a name-dropping, status-seeking peacock seething with rage against women who threaten to expose his weakness. Bale, pumped up and ghoulish, gives a deft performance, and some of the satiric jabs at the expense of male vanity are pungent; when Patrick has sex with two women (in the scene that initially earned the movie an NC-17 rating), he's more interested in admiring his own performance than in giving or receiving pleasure. Despite its occasional sly touches, American Psycho quickly wears thin. Even satire needs more than one dimension--or maybe it just needs to be wittier than this movie turns out to be. Harron's vision of men as pathetically deluded studs is finally too unmodulated to sustain an entire film. What did you think of this movie? Sound off in the Movie Forum.