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I Film's scariest aspect is the slasher's face By Carrie Rickey INQUIRER MOVIE CRITIC Picture a high-end version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre set in the rarefied bistros, boites and brokerages of Yuppie Manhattan in the 1980s, and you have American Psycho, Mary Harron's well-wrought but silly adaptation of Bret Easton El- lis' overwrought 1991 i American Psycho y2 Produced by Edward Pressman, Chris Hanley and Christian Halsey Solomon, directed by Mary Harron, written by Harron and Guinevere Turner, photography by Andrzej Sekula, music by John Cale, distributed by Lions Gate Films. Running time: 1 hour, 40 mins. Patrick Bateman Christian Bale Donald Kimball Willem Dafoe Courtney Samantha Mathis Jean Chloe Sevigny Evelyn Reese Witherspoon Parent's guide: (sex, violence, sexual violence) Showing at: area theaters Film Review novel. Worse yet, picture a postmodern version of House of Wax, the horrorfest about the perfectionist artist who dips real corpses into wax to create his gallery of realist sculptures and you get the gimmick. American Psycho's title character is a compulsive guy who grows homicidal whenever he feels fear or lust, which is pretty much all the time.

There's always a prettier blonde, a hipper restaurant or a sharper business card that makes him perspire with desire, always a homeless man or inquisitive detective that makes him sweat with dread. The film's Big Idea is that the more we consume, the more faceless and interchangeable we become. And the film's Big Irony is that we never know whether we're watching (a) the horror story about a sociopath who's such an extreme consumer that he consumes human flesh or (b) the feverish dream of a yuppie who gets confused with every other suspender-wearing, pinstripe-suited Wall Street greedmeister of the universe. Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) is the title figure, an extremely wealthy, extremely fastidious waxwork of a man. In this regard, he is kin to Andy Warhol, the subject of Harron's previous film, I Shot Andy Warhol.

That Patrick is a delusional, self-hat- Paul Newman plays a crafty con and Linda Fiorentino is the nurse who grows suspicious of his act. She comes to see his criminal expertise as a ticket out of a humdrum life. The 75-year-old star creates another charming rogue. 'Where the Money Is': A trifle, but you can bank on Newman fj i '-7 71 7 c. his wheelchair into a river, forcing him to miraculously recover the use of his limbs and swim for his life.

As she showed in The Last Seduction, Fiorentino is no slouch when it comes to playing femmes who really are fatale. In Where the Money Is, she often seems of two minds on how to play Carol. Nonetheless, the most entertaining scenes in Kanievska's movie explore the ambiguities of her growing relationship with Henry. Carol is married to her high school sweetheart, Wayne, and very restless. Henry is an intriguing possibility not so much for romance but as a ticket out of the humdrum life of a small town.

Henry brings a lifetime of expertise to the art of robbery, and there's an armored car that, makes the rounds of various supermarkets, arenas and casinos to pick up the day's take. But when the proposition of allying with the none-too-bright Wayne and the ambitious Carol surfaces, Henry rolls his eyes and mutters, "Amateurs!" Any actor sharing screen time with the consummate professionalism of Newman in this kind of movie is going to feel like a rank amateur. Where the Money Is leaves you in no doubt of where the talent is in what would otherwise be a throwaway picture. f'j, ft Where the Money Is Produced by Ridley Scott, Charles Weinstock, Chris Zarpas and Christopher Dorr; directed by Marek Kanievska; written by E. Max Frye, Topper Lilien and Carroll Cartwright; photography by Thomas Burstyn; music by Mark Isham; distributed by USA Films.

Running time: 1 hour, 30 mins. Henry Manning Paul Newman Carol Linda Fiorentino Wayne Dermot Mulroney Mrs. Foster Susan Barnes Mrs. Tetlow Anne Pitoniak Parent's guide: PG-13 (profanity) Showing at: area theaters man effortlessly steals off with the movie long before the heist begins. Henry, with much hard time on his hands in the penitentiary, has a stroke of genius.

He fakes a stroke, which wins him a pass to a nursing home, where he lies paralyzed in his room. It took a superhuman effort to convince the prison authorities that he was not faking. But it's beyond even Henry's powers of conmanship to dupe Carol (Linda Fiorentino), the sultry and increasingly skeptical nurse assigned to take care of him. She ultimately tests her suspicions by dumping Henry from ing woman-hater loosely links him with Valerie Solanas the woman who shot Warhol a delusional, self-hating man-hater. You have to admire Harron for making a variation on a theme, however creepy.

And you have to admire Andrzej Sekula's cinematography, which makes every plate of squid ravioli drizzled and dolloped with sauces that could be raspberry vinaigrette or blood, look as if it belongs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But one could observe of Harron's New York as Gertrude Stein once observed of Oakland, Calif. There's no there there. Harron, who adapted Ellis' novel with screenwriteractress Guinevere Turner, has made an extremely glossy, shallow movie about an extremely glossy, shallow man. The scariest aspect of this NC-17 film, which is gory, but not as much as most R-rated slashers, is Christian Bale's masklike face.

With a mug this taut and tense and pursed, a serial killer need not hide behind a hockey mask. Friday, April 14, 2000 By Desmond Ryan INQUIRER MOVIE CRITIC the climax of Where the Money Is, there's a dizzy i plunge off a precipice, which serves as a reminder that there's a considerable falling off in quality between Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Paul Newman's latest screen hustle. And none of that decline, we should hastily add, Tnm man. At the age of 75, Review Newman continues to enjoy a wonderfully fertile autumn as an actor and a star whose presence and charisma seem embellished rather than dimmed by the passing years. The script of Where the Money Is, the first feature Marek Kanievs-ka has directed in 13 years, may be progressively burdened with contrivance and silliness, but Newman's aplomb still carries the day.

Newman's Henry Manning, a grizzled old bank robber of legendary stature in criminal circles, is a worthy addition to the gallery of charming rogues that stretches back to Butch Cassidy and Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler. The crime at the heart of Where the Money Is involves a succession of armed robberies staged on a single night, but it should be no surprise that New- W4. i f. vv I Christian Bale and Chloe Sevigny star in "American Psycho," an adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel. Bale is the wealthy, fastidious title character who grows homicidal whenever he feels fear or lust.

THE PIULA DELPHI A JNqyiRER.