Fight Club (1999)
An unnamed Narrator recounts the events that led to him meeting a man named Tyler Durden. After working a dead-end job and living an unsatisfying life with an apartment full of IKEA furniture and a fridge full of condiments and no food, the Narrator begins to suffer from insomnia. After his doctor refuses to prescribe him anything, suggesting he attends a testicular cancer support group to experience “real suffering”, the Narrator meets and befriends Robert “Bob” Paulson, a man suffering from a testosterone irregularity that causes him to develop breasts. However, being able to freely express his feelings and emotions, despite not really suffering from cancer, allows the Narrator to finally sleep peacefully. He becomes addicted to the feeling and starts attending other support groups.
His routine is interrupted by the arrival of the eccentric, chain-smoking Marla Singer, who is another “tourist” who fakes attending these groups. The Narrator confronts her as his insomnia returns, and the two work out a schedule to attend opposite meetings from one another, while also exchanging contact information. Soon after, the Narrator starts attending business trips on behalf of his automobile recall center job, where, on one of these flights, he meets Tyler Durden, a traveling soap salesman.
Returning home to find his condominium ablaze from a controlled detonation, the Narrator asks to stay with Tyler, who agrees on the condition that the Narrator hit him as hard as possible. Upon doing so and enjoying the mutual feeling of expressing violence, the two men begin regularly fighting every weekend and start bringing in other disgruntled members of society to take part. In the basement of a bar they frequent, Tyler and the Narrator establish “Fight Club”, an underground fighting ring with rules in place to prevent interference from law enforcement. The bar’s owner, Lou, confronts Tyler at gunpoint about the club, but is quickly scared off when Tyler shakes off his beating.
Marla calls the Narrator, revealing she has overdosed on Xanax in an attempt to kill herself. The Narrator intends on ignoring Marla’s cries for help, but Tyler instead interferes and rescues her from her apartment, bringing her back to his place where they begin a sexual relationship. After stealing body fat from a liposuction clinic, Tyler and the Narrator begin producing large amounts of nitroglycerin, during which Tyler gives the Narrator a chemical burn. The Narrator kicks Marla out as Tyler begins building a terrorist network called “Project Mayhem”, recruiting Bob, Angel Face (another patron of fight club whom the Narrator brutalizes in one of the fights) and several other members.
When Project Mayhem is threatened by the city’s governor, Tyler kidnaps and threatens him into leaving them alone. During another Project Mayhem outing, Bob is shot and killed by police officers, during which the Narrator finally snaps and tries to stop Tyler’s plans. He goes from flight to flight looking for him, but finds that Tyler is establishing a criminal network everywhere he goes, expanding Project Mayhem across multiple states. The Narrator catches up to Tyler, but soon learns from both a bartender in Project Mayhem as well as Marla herself that the Narrator is in fact Tyler himself, who resides as a split personality inside the Narrator’s mind.
The Narrator returns to New York and corroborates with Detective Stern, the officer looking into his apartment explosion, about Project Mayhem’s plan to destroy the Financial District, which would reset the world’s debt and cause mass chaos. During the interrogation, several officers reveal themselves to be Project Mayhem members and attempt to castrate the Narrator on Tyler’s orders. The Narrator escapes and flees into a nearby building armed with an explosive set by Tyler, which he disables before Tyler beats him unconscious. Tyler confronts the Narrator at gunpoint, during which the Narrator non-fatally shoots himself in the mouth, while killing the Tyler personality for good. Marla is brought to the building and is reunited with the Narrator just as the rest of the explosives detonate.