10 Best Jared Leto Performances
9. American Psycho
Who is Paul Allen?
Paul Allen is everything that Patrick Bateman wants to be. He is better dressed. He has a nicer apartment. He can get reservations in Dorsia easily, whereas Bateman struggles to do so. He is the shadow and the light that stands at the end of a very dark tunnel that Bateman looks through.
So, what does Bateman do?
Poor, poor Paul Allen.
Jared Leto is back to his charming best in the role that saw him really get to know about Huey Lewis and The News. His crime? All of the above, but most especially his wonderful business card, which is simply too good to be allowed.
Christian Bale is the star of the show who seethes with pure resentment once he gets to meet Paul. Leto and Bale bounce off each other as members of the New York upper elite, smarmy and false. Leto's Allen confuses Bateman for another colleague and agrees to go to dinner with him. Bateman gets him drunk and takes him back to an apartment.
What follows is easily one of the movie's more memorable, and disturbing, scenes. Allen, extremely drunk, reclines in the chair as he laughs at the newspaper on the floor. He asks if it is to clean up the mess of Bateman's dog.
Bateman raises the axe. It's not for the dog.
That last look of terror on Leto's face is hard to forget in one of the more disturbing films of his career.