New York Times
"[O]ne of the few movies to scale the barrier between chilly fantasy and authentic cinematic nightmare. The actor backs up his stunt with a performance that builds to a pinnacle of savage fury and desperation." 10/22/2004 p.E20Los Angeles Times
"Bale, always a nervy, risk-taking actor, gives a haunting performance of fierce concentration." 10/22/2004 p.E16 Rolling Stone
"[I]t's Bale's gripping, beyond-the-call-of-duty performance that holds you in thrall." 11/11/2004 p.115 Movieline's Hollywood Life
"Director Brad Anderson has crafted a taut psychological thriller with a terrific payoff." 10/01/2004 p.117 Sight and Sound
"Bale's performance has the emotional weight to substantiate this body-art spectacle..." 03/01/2005 p.59-60 Uncut
"Not since MEMENTO has there been such an engrossingly murky enigma of a film....This is a terrific pulp puzzler..." 04/01/2005 p.134 Uncut
Ranked #23 in Uncut's Best Films Of 2005 -- "[E]choes of Dostoevsky, JACOB'S LADDER and MEMENTO only compound the forbidding atmosphere." 01/01/2006 p.82-83 ReelViews 7 of 10
A noir horror movie of the most un-classic kind, Brad Anderson's The Machinist takes you into the unstable mind of an insomniac with a dark secret whose life has become a bleak emotional wasteland devoted only to going through the motions of working. Blessed with an extraordinary performance by Christian Bale, this movie plays out like a nightmare, and will remind some viewers of The Fight Club, Memento, and Insomnia. 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...Style builds suspense. The scenes around the machinery are staged in a way that radiate menace. The expectation - which is fulfilled - is that something will go horribly wrong. The camerawork and claustrophobic atmosphere are designed to externally replicate Trevor's mental state. In addition, Anderson has drastically de-saturated the color, resulting in a spartan look that is only one step up from monochrome. And there's a scene with an approaching thunderstorm that is perfect in the way it is composed and presented...Even for those who are able to piece together exactly what is happening before the movie explicitly reveals everything, The Machinist is still capable of capturing the attention. The film is dark, but rewarding, and it never cheats the viewer. There are no sudden twists designed to blindside an audience. The reveals occur gradually, with Anderson allowing us the pleasure of putting the pieces together. The Machinist requires a certain kind of viewer - one who is comfortable with grimness and a certain amount of gore. Members of that group will appreciate what this picture has to offer. - James Berardinelli
Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
"If you were any thinner," Stevie tells him, "you wouldn't exist." Trevor Reznik weighs 121 pounds and you wince when you look at him. He is a lonely man, disliked at work, up all night, returning needfully to two women who are kind to him: Stevie, a hooker, and Marie, the waitress at the all-night diner out at the airport. "I haven't slept in a year," he tells Marie...Christian Bale lost more than 60 pounds to play this role, a fact I share not because you need to know how much weight he lost, but because you need to know that it is indeed Christian Bale. He is so gaunt, his face so hollow, he looks nothing like the actor we're familiar with. There are moments when his appearance even distracts from his performance, because we worry about him. Certainly we believe that the character, Trevor, is at the end of his rope, and I was reminded of Anthony Perkins' work in Orson Welles' "The Trial," another film about a man who finds himself trapped in the vise of the world's madness..."The Machinist" has an ending that provides a satisfactory, or at least a believable, explanation for its mysteries and contradictions. But the movie is not about the plot, and while the conclusion explains Trevor's anguish, it doesn't account for it. The director Brad Anderson, working from a screenplay by Scott Kosar, wants to convey a state of mind, and he and Bale do that with disturbing effectiveness. The photography by Xavi Gimenez and Charlie Jiminez is cold slates, blues and grays, the palate of despair. We see Trevor's world so clearly through his eyes that only gradually does it occur to us that every life is seen through a filter...Near the end of the movie, we understand him when he simply says, "I just want to sleep." - Roger Ebert
|
