Grim, well-acted movie that grabs your interest

Rating: 8/10 (25 January 2006)

Christian Bale and Jennifer Jason Leigh give outstanding performances in this psycho-drama that steadily cranks up the chill factor while keeping you dreading whatever kind of weirdness and bad news will happen next. This movie isn't quite as good a psycho-thriller as the top-notch "Frailty" (which is one of the most intense, frightening and gripping movies I've ever seen), and will remind you somewhat of "Jacob's Ladder", wherein the protagonist's hallucinations are hard to separate from the "normal" state of being and where the penny drops for you at the very end of the movie, but it's really entertaining, especially the macabre amusement-park ride that the protagonist, Trevor Reznik (played by Christian Bale), takes at one point.
The movie is beautifully filmed in a sort of pseudo black-and-white, to emphasize Trevor's bleak world and state of mind - a state of mind that goes along with working in a large machine-shop and not having slept for a year. A year! Not only that, but Trevor is a physical wreck - skeletally gaunt and looking strung out on the coffee and cigs that he consumes and whatever it is that is driving his apparent psychosis. So why has Trevor not slept for a year and why is he such a wreck? And why does JJL, playing a hooker, seem so fond of him? (She's too plumply gorgeous to be a hooker in Trevor's world, but who cares?, and she manages to act believable anyway.) Watch the movie and enjoy finding out.