FIGHT CLUB: MEMBERS ONLY

by Kevin Koehler

David Fincher's sanguine exploration of materialism and masculine identity, Fight Club, is a magnificent picture. It's so complex, topical, piquant, so romantically recalcitrant of studio filmmaking mores you have to wonder how it got made in the first place. Yet for all its virtues, Fincher's Fight Club is lacking in one crucial thing: the redemptive power of dance.

Thank God for small miracles and Vikram Chopra, the intellect behind Bollywood's reimagining Fight Club: Members Only. It would be unfair to say this picture outrightly plagiarizes; the plots differ substantially, saying nothing of Chopra's glorious execution. There are elements of the original that filter in, surely, but these are tempered by a more obvious filching of auteurist touchstone Road House. If you're going to steal, steal from the best.

Meet the charming protagonists of Members Only, four sartorially obsessed friends from Mumbai, India. They're rather like an early-oughts boy band, distinguished from each other by some shorthand defining trait. Vicky (Khan) is the brains, Karan (Morea) is shy, Dhiku (Chowdry) is funny, and Somil (Deshmukh) is funny-looking; despite their differences, each share a weakness for loud shirts, gold chains, exposed chest hair, and choreographed dance scored to infectious, rap-infused Bhangra. "Move your body, baby, shake your body, honey" goes one verse. "Girl you so sweet, what you want, I got the money." Poetry really, and the lip-synching done by our boys is without peer.

It is after one of these musical interludes that Vicky (he is the brains, after all) happens upon a solution to the gang's money troubles: they will arrange a location for the irascible college kids of Mumbai to work out their differences and settle scores with enemies, then charge each a thousand rupees to participate. "So you've even thought of a name" asks Somil. Why yes, he has thought up a name, all by himself in fact, and that name is Fight Club.

This Fight Club has streamlined its predecessor's eight rules into five, the most important one being "there is no Fight Club." A marked enhancement on "do not talk about Fight Club," I must say, a declaration that's far too ambiguous. Is writing about Fight Club allowed? What about sign language? You can see how this could cause confusion. Likewise improved: the titular Fight Club has become a gender-neutral affair, allowing for two aesthetically-gifted Bollywood babes in cut-offs to articulate feminist empowerment by tearing off each others' shirts against a chorus of "catfight, catfight." It's basically Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony but with bikini tops and kung fu.

Like most truly epic films, this one has an intermission (total running time is a laconic two hours and twenty-five minutes), after which the action transitions to Delhi, where our impeccably-dressed dandies renovate a dowdy backwoods bar. They simply will not allow it to become a "drug addict's haven," incurring the wrath of local organized crime elements who wear beards or look like Lorenzo Lamas (LLLL for short). It requires extreme measures: sensitive yet pugilistically-astute bouncer Sameer (Sohail Khan) is recruited to clean proverbial (road)house. After two additional song and dance episodes that are not homoerotic in the slightest, the stage is set for an electrifying climactic showdown at a construction site. Loyalties are tested, the true meaning of friendship learned, and people are thrown through all manner of wall, furniture, and glass window in dramatic slow motion.

Said another way: when Fincher's Fight Club Narrator remarks "I want to destroy something beautiful," watch out Vikram Chopra. He could be talking about your film.

Interesting footnote: Strangely, both Fight Club and Road House have both been developed as stage musicals. The camp comedy Road House: The Stage Version Of The Cinema Classic That Starred Patrick Swayze, Except This One Stars Taimak From The 80’s Cult Classic “The Last Dragon” Wearing A Blonde Mullet Wig premiered off-Broadway in 2003 while Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk has apparently had discussion with both Fincher and Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor about adapting his book for the theater.

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