Our unnamed narrator (Edward Norton) leads a bleak, empty existence as a corporate drone - trying to derive some kind of meaning from purchasing the furniture and home accessories that "define him as a person". Tortured by insomnia, he finds the only thing that lets him sleep is to vicariously feel real emotion by attending support groups for various diseases - testicular cancer, blood parasites and so on.
Eventually he meets Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) another support group "faker". The magic is ruined and again he cannot sleep. At this point he runs into the enigmatic Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), out of sheer lack of anything better to do, they start to beat each other up in a carpark. The Narrator finds this an even better emotional connection than the support groups and it builds into "Fight Club" - where hundreds of disillusioned men meet to fight bare-knuckle - just to feel alive.
Fight Club is a remarkable movie - it's nasty, brutal, fiendishly intelligent and often extremely funny. Imagine a surly, drunken "Dilbert". Fight Club is primarily about masculinity- what it means, how it works and what happens when it goes wrong. In some of the most fascinating scenes it offers some very perceptive insights into the semi-fascist willingness we all have to submit to something that makes us feel important.
Fight Club seems very much to be a "love it or hate it" movie - but I found it a seductive, punishing experience that suckers you in and then slaps you down hard.