"A little guilt goes a long way..."

Rating: 8/10 (30 June 2006)

...and makes "The Machinist" a film you simply can't tear your eyes away from, and not just because of how astoundingly Christian Bale starved himself down to skin and bone for the role of Trevor Reznik, a man who hasn't been able to sleep for a year and is suffering for it both mentally and physically. Or is there more to it than that? Tightly scripted by up-and-comer Scott Kosar, who did a tolerable job on the 2003 remake of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," along with last year's "The Amityville Horror," which I haven't seen yet, and is slated for screen writing duties for the updating of George A. Romero's "The Crazies," and directed by auteur Brad Anderson, whose prior work is unfamiliar to me, but will hopefully not remain so, "The Machinist" is a prime psycho-thriller along the lines of "Memento," "Fight Club," and numerous others mentioned elsewhere on these boards. I can't say I've seen such an effective portrait of psychological disintegration since Catherine Deneuve's descent into madness in Roman Polanski's classic "Repulsion."
In addition, Xavi "Darkness" Giménez' stark cinematography, cast in washed-out blues, grays, and greens, the immaculate art direction of Alain Bainée, and the remarkably appropriate score by Roque "Sexy Beast" Baños all contribute to the film's sense of unavoidable deterioration and inescapable doom. The acting support from Jennifer Jason Leigh as a sympathetic prostitute, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón as an equally sympathetic widowed waitress, Michael Ironside as an unfortunate victim of Reznik's psychosis, and John Sharian (sporting an awesome set of choppers and one of the oddest disfigurements in recent memory) as Reznik's sinister nemesis, Ivan, is uniformly effective. There really isn't a false note in the entire film; one finds oneself drawn completely and utterly into Reznik's Dostoyevskian, Twilight Zone world, replete with signposts up ahead, all the little hints that lead us along with Reznik to the film's ultimate revelations.
Certainly "The Machinist" is not a film for everyone. It's a grim picture, a portrait of a man drowning in his own paranoia and confusion and suppressed guilt. In some respects, it's like watching something very unsettling in slow motion, a living nightmare that, unlike Bale's tormented character who craves the blessed peace and oblivion of sleep, you want to wake up from. Thankfully, at film's end, Trevor Reznik does "wake up" and confront the source of his torture in a resolution that is somewhat predictable (if only to the inveterate film buff), but logically and emotionally satisfying.
Highly recommended to those who appreciate the superior acting chops of Christian Bale, as well as thriller fans who love Hitchcockian mind play. Don't miss the visual nod to "Psycho!"