Not since Hitchcock's masterpiece "Psycho" 40 years ago (with the possible exception of Kubrik's "A Clockwork Orange" a decade later) has a horror-of-personality film been so anticipated by the media as "American Psycho.” It premiered here at Sundance Film Festival Friday night. No major studio was willing to adapt the Bret Easton Ellis best selling novel from the Reagan era to the cinema for fear of the controversy. It took independent filmmakers to bring it to the screen. Many will wonder why they bothered.

Freedom of expression notwithstanding, "American Psycho" invites public condemnation. It is, after all, about a world full of greedy, materialistic, white-bread, Ivy-Leagued, late twenty-something, Tom Wolfian "masters of the universe" living in New York City in the 1980s. Not a single character is admirable, or even likable. The leading character, Patrick Bateman, is plagued by homicidal fantasies. Some will say "Hooray for Hollywood" for passing on the opportunity to make these despicable, amoral characters role models for American teens.

In defense of the filmmakers, the production of "American Psycho" presented a monumental, if not impossible, mission. This film attempts to force the viewer to confront some disturbing truths about what lies beneath the surface of American success. The American psycho in this film is not some ne'er-do-well loner whose mother abused him, but an offspring of inherited wealth and untrammeled ambition surrounded by sycophants on Wall Street. He is an equal opportunity killer -- stalking on white and black, colleague and stranger, male and female alike. Mr. Bateman pays lip service to liberal causes, but demonstrates no personal cognizance of basic civil liberties. In short, he is on the surface everything American society admires; on the inside, everything it fears.

Reliance on the first person perspective of a serial killer was the single biggest challenge of this film. This is a story not simply about a homicidal narcissist; it is a story told by him. No less than the venerable Hitchcock tackled this Herculean task when he explored the limits of the first person perspective of a murderer in "Psycho." Where Hitchcock cleverly tricked the viewer into sympathy for Norman Bates, director Mary Harron attempts from the start to compel the viewer to accept Patrick Bateman as the protagonist. Therein lies the problem. The viewer can never admittedly identify with the unsympathetic Bateman. Instead, the viewer vacillates between laughing at Bateman's idiosyncrasies and repulsing at Bateman's fantasies. "American Psycho" thus fails in its mission to move the audience to confront themselves .

Nevertheless, “American Psycho" is not without some possible redeeming features. The mental health community may admire the film’s character studies - the superficiality and self-absorbed vapidity of the characters makes them poster children for the narcissistic personality disorder. So too does director Mary Harron’s treatment of violence in a stylized and understated way warrant praise as it reflects more the surreal world of Bateman's psyche than the real world of headline news. Above all, Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman, could convince a Brooklyn jury in a New York minute that he deserves the insanity defense -- so convincing is his performance. For these reasons, "American Psycho" deserves clemency: life without parole in the prison of film archives.