Will need more than one viewing to fully appreciate

Rating: 8/10 (4 July 2006)

The Machinist is a film I find hard to categorise. When first viewed it may come across as a mystery, on second, a character study. Whatever it is, it's very good, and will need to be seen twice to fully appreciate the detail of the main character Trevor Reznik and the effort that went into all of he the details of the character (not just Christian Bale's jaw dropping weight loss). I don't want to say any more for fear of giving too much away, but I will say if you thought the film had "been done before" to an extent, you mustn't dismiss it, but re-watch it, discover the differences and see that this film is an exceptional character study of a very interesting character.