Brilliant moody trip through a damaged mind.

Rating: 10/10 (1 May 2008)

This has to be one of Christian Bale's most memorable performances. I have read that he lost nearly 70 pounds for the role, which is an astonishing amount of weight and supposedly the most that any actor has deliberately lost for any role in a movie in film history. His appearance is frightening in itself, with his protruding bones and sunken eyes, he inhabits the role of a man struggling with severe insomnia and an increasing array of other problems. He has a job as a machinist and it is not pleasant work. It's repetitive and dark and boring, and he tends not to get along with his colleagues so well. He seems a little out of place, even a little confused by his surroundings, and becomes increasingly distracted by various strange occurrences.
I love that Bale's character's name is Trevor Reznik, named after Trent Reznor, the singer of Nine Inch Nails, one of my favorite bands. I hear that they were sought after to do the soundtrack but they decided not to go in that direction with the movie. It's too bad, too, because Nine Inch Nails could not possibly do anything bad to a movie like this. There is an intense scene in the film where Trevor is giving a 'hand' to a co-worker named Miller, when he gets distracted and bumps into a power button, activating a machine which then won't stop, and Miller loses an arm at the elbow. It's a grisly, painful scene to watch, and it is a major turning point in the movie and Trevor' life.
Later, Miller is able to make feeble attempts to joke about the accident, apparently trying to make some light of the subject while at the same time barely covering his mixture of anger at Trevor's catastrophic carelessness and shock at how quickly his body and his life were forever changed. Trevor, on the other hand, is tremendously upset at the accident, and becomes increasingly irrational and angry as time goes on, as he tries to figure out what happened.
There is a man named Ivan who works with Trevor, and for a variety of reasons they get to know each other. Ivan once suffered an injury at the workplace and lost some fingers, which were then replaced with some of his toes, resulting in one of the most grotesque things you may ever have seen organically attached to a human hand. It is truly disgusting. Things start to get weird for Trevor when he discovers that he is the only person who knows of any Ivan that works there.
The idea of a character getting to know someone and then discovering that that person doesn't really exist is nothing new, but here it prevents us from having any idea where the movie is going. I think it's safe to assume that a lot of what is happening is happening in Trevor's head, but more importantly, it is a fascinating trip through the moody blue atmosphere of Trevor's sleep-deprived mind.
For a temporary escape from his lifeless life, he looks to Stevie, a prostitute who gives him much more than sex, she gives him an understanding that he can't seem to get anywhere else. Jennifer Jason Leigh is surprisingly effective in this role, and she is able to very clearly portray Stevie's understanding of Trevor, as well as the emergence of their mutual need that goes far beyond just being physical.
If there are any slow points in the movie, they are easily glossed over by the interest generated by Trevor's deteriorating condition. Something terrible has happened to him in the past, or continues happening, and the movie shows us his own efforts to figure it out, put everything back in order, and finally get some sleep. The end of the movie will disappoint some viewers, but like so many other great films, it doesn't tie everything up in a nice little bow. It leaves you thinking, and demands a second viewing.
Note: According to the IMDb trivia page for the movie, Scott Kosar wrote the screenplay for this movie right out of film school, which would mean that, when he wrote the script for the 2003 Texas Chainsaw remake the year before, he was still a student. This may provide some reason for why that movie was so astonishingly bad. Director Brad Anderson, on the other hand, also wrote and directed a brilliant horror film a few years ago called Session 9, which I also highly recommend