THE MACHINIST

Trevor Reznik (an unrecognisable Christian Bale) is a sleep-deprived machine operator who spends his spare time drinking coffee at an airport café and buying the favours of warm-hearted hooker Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to alleviate his loneliness. Living alone in an apartment, Trevor writes personal notes to remind his forgetful self of menial tasks, but after causing an industrial accident - in which the gruff but amiable Miller (Michael Ironside) suffers a dismembered arm - is convinced that his fellow workers and a bald-headed weirdo called Ivan (John Sharian) are hatching some kind of terrible plot against him, that stretches his sanity to the very limits.

In a feat of awesome commitment, Christian Bale managed to boil his frame down to a scrawny 90-pounds for this part. Hollow-faced, sickeningly thin and appropriately cadaverous as a man whose troubled mind seems to eat away at his body, one still wonders whether it was worth the effort after seeing the final result. In spite of the strikingly whitewashed photography and languorous camerawork, this probing effort by director Brad Anderson is a victim of its own ambitions. Cueing is in far too soon of its excursions into FIGHT CLUB and MEMENTO territory, the viewer is made too aware that it encompasses both imaginary friends and memories that must be teased out of hiding.

The general self-consciousness - including some gross overacting by John Sharian, as 'Ivan' - tells us that we'd perhaps be better off had we chosen David Fincher's radical 'scope nightmare, although there are two fantastic 'excursions' into Reznik's haunted psyche, prompted by a magnificently garish ghost train and a pitch black passage beneath a train station. In spite of this, Bale is far too affected in his mannerisms, dialogue and body language, as if a desperate attempt to distinguish himself from the tortured loners played far better by Edward Norton in FIGHT CLUB and especially Sean Gullette of the riveting PI - by means of overkill.

With a stellar supporting cast (Michael Ironside, Jennifer Jason-Leigh) and polished cinematography, THE MACHINIST is always watchable, yet it is also an unfortunate misfire. The film's early departure from Reznik's mind limits the scope of the film's ambiguity, and reduces Reznik all to often to a pathetic and shambling figure: we'd rather see more of the inner workings of his mind than the blank mask that covers it. The final twist seems a betrayal of the energy invested by the audience (so contrived it is), but this mechanical approach would perhaps seem apt given the film's title.

Tartan give us a faultless anamorphic transfer (2.35:1) and, as usual, doesn't skimp on the extras. Most notable is the commentary by Brad Anderson, who reveals that the film was shot in Spain - a key factor behind the dislocated feel. Anderson provides the insight that he is another in a long line of filmmakers to have made Michael Ironside suffer a hacked limb (as magnificent Dutchman Paul Verhoeven did in both TOTAL RECALL and STARSHIP TROOPERS), and drops the bombshell that Bale dropped 63-pounds in weight for the part!

Review by Matthew Sanderson