Though the film starts slowly, it unfolds irresistibly, thanks mainly to Bale's full-bodied, soulful performance.
The Machinist (2004)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:131
Fresh:98
Rotten:33
Average Rating:6.6/10
Consensus: A suspenseful low-budget thriller where Christian Bale completely inhabits his role.
Rated: R [See Full Rating] for violence and disturbing images, sexuality and language
Runtime: 1 hr 43 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Oct 22, 2004 Limited
Box Office: $939,471
Synopsis: Christian Bale delivers one of cinema's most sacrificial performances in Brad Anderson's mesmerizing thriller. Written by Scott Kosar (2003's THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE), THE MACHINIST takes place... Christian Bale delivers one of cinema's most sacrificial performances in Brad Anderson's mesmerizing thriller. Written by Scott Kosar (2003's THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE), THE MACHINIST takes place in a bleak and nondescript American city, where Trevor Reznick (Bale) is quite literally withering away to nothing. During the day Trevor works in a colorless industrial factory, while at night he seeks refuge in the bed of a tender prostitute, Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh). For reasons unknown even to Trevor, he hasn't been able to sleep for an entire year. In the process, he has shed over sixty pounds, making him look like a walking skeleton. After an accident at the factory costs Trevor his job, he finds himself tracking a mysterious figure that may or may not, in fact, provide some answers to his confusion. Meanwhile, he begins to connect with a pretty airport waitress, Marie (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon), who shows Trevor some much-needed sympathy. By the time the film builds to its revelatory conclusion, it becomes quite clear just what has been tormenting Trevor all along. Anderson and Kosar's vision is brought to spectacular life by cinematographer Xavi Gimenez and composer Roque Banos, whose haunting atmospherics recall the best work of Alfred Hitchcock. And then, of course, there is Bale, whose performance is as terrifying, brave, and devastating as the screen has ever seen. [More]
Starring: Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, Michael Ironside
Starring: Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, Michael Ironside, John Sharian
Director: Brad Anderson
Director: Brad Anderson
Screenwriter: Scott Kosar
Producer: Julio Fernandez
Composer: Roque Banos
Studio: Paramount Classics
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Release:
May 19, 2009
Blu-ray Disc Features:
- Region [unknown]
- NTSC
- Widescreen
Audio:
- Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby True HD 5.1 - English, French, Portuguese, Spanish
- Subtitles - English - SDH
- Subtitles - English, French, Portuguese, Spanish
Additional Release Material:
Audio Commentary:
- 1. Director Brad Anderson
Trailers:
- 1. Theatrical Trailer
Additional Scenes:
- 1. Trevor Visits Mysterious Grave
- 2. Alternate Intersection Crosscut with Burning Paper
- 3. Pensive Trevor (Alternate Transition to Airport)
- 4. Stevie's Mysterious "John"
- 5. Alternate Chase Ending Revealing Chimneys
- 6. Trevor Tries To Skip Town
- 7. Trevor Confronts Mother at Cemetery
- 8. Alternative Version of Holding Cell
Reviews for The Machinist
Anderson does keep a fairly predictable, deeply depressing plot line engrossing for most of the way.
Anderson gives The Machinist a sickly noirish look that contributes to the creeping horror -- but it's the emaciated Bale's spectral presence that leaves the imprint.
As flashbacks show Trevor at other moments, when his head is slightly less scrambled and his body less eaten away, the film is never not about process.
Watching it, I kept wondering: What, exactly, is the point? The movie sustains its ominous hum, but in the end, it doesn't really give you all that much to think about.
Bale's brilliance in the role lies not only in the fact that he starved himself for months but that he fully inhabits this wasted, paranoid man.
Bale, always a nervy, risk-taking actor, gives a haunting performance of fierce concentration that goes beyond his dramatic weight loss.
Christian Bale's 63-pound weight loss makes this bleak thriller one of the few movies to scale the barrier between chilly fantasy and authentic cinematic nightmare.
Effectively weirded-out chiller about a factory worker who may - or may not - be a cold-blooded killer. Bale is brilliant.
This ultimately disappointing picture is suitably dingy-looking, intermittently scary, and boasts a nice, creepy score complete with theremins and Bernard Hermann–esque bass accents.
The Machinist is a beautifly haunting - chillingly stark - film that places you knee-deep within an oblique nightmarescape a strange and troubled man is experiencing.
Bale provides us with images that we won't soon forget. The script, however, is never nearly as good as the film's indelible images.
Although The Machinist may at times seem to be derivative of those films, and is inferior to them, it is nevertheless a harrowing experience for those to whom this sort of story appeals.
Covers familiar ground with elegance, teasing out its twists and turns in a way that seems natural rather than contrived.
As its stricken hero's prominently posed copies of Kafka and Dostoyevsky suggest, the movie takes itself more seriously than it should.
A fairly standard issue psychological thriller, although Christian Bale's physical transformation for this film is truly astonishing.
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