The Machinist

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Summary:
Trevor Reznik is a machinist that has spent the last year with a bad case of insomnia. He hasn’t slept, nor does he have any friends. His only real ‘companion’ is a prostitute that he visits frequently. What’s even more distressing is that he’s been wasting away physically as well, becoming nearly a skeleton of himself since his year of no sleep.
His mind starts playing tricks on him, and bad things start happening at the machine factory thanks to his mental problems, and he’s getting weird post-it messages in his home from some unknown intruder.

Review:
I’ve been waiting quite a long time to see this movie. There have been extremely positive reviews from the horror fans, and mediocre to unsatisfied results by the remaining list of movie critics. I’m upset that this hasn’t been released over a year ago as planned, and I only wish that I could have seen it sooner.
Was it worth the wait?
Hardly.
I am quite the fan of Christian Bale, being impressed with his introductory performance in Empire of the Sun years ago, and since then I’ve been paying attention to what he’s been doing. After American Psycho, I was hooked. This man kicks ass. His commitment to a role is amazing, an obvious testimony coming from this movie. He went from 195 pounds down to around 115 for his role in this film. He was a strapping hotty with a killer body, but became a skeletal frame of his old self the likes of a concentration camp victim for this role.
It’s all fine and dandy that he’s gone to such great lengths for a film. I respect him for his commitment to acting, and many deem this loss of weight as a “stunt”, and so be it. I see it as him trying to be the most ‘fit’ for the role. Props to the man once again. If you haven’t seen American Psycho yet, go see it now. That’s him working his body to prime shape for the role. That could be deemed a ‘stunt’, too, but so many actors have amazing bodies that no one wants to give him credit for that as much as the attention-grabbing change that came from this performance. Whatever, dudes, just give credit where credit’s due.
The least you can say about Bale is that he’s committed to trying to fit the part.
I was hoping that The Machinist would give me great thrills, a mind-crunching plot and some killer suspense. I got no suspense, a predictable storyline that I had figured out even though I wasn’t trying, and some wierdness that wasn’t really that weird, more than it was an attempt at BEING weird just for the sake of making you go, “hey, what’s going on here?”
The worst part of all for me was that what was going on wasn’t that important to me, and I was hoping for something to start ‘happening’ for the first hour and a half, but nothing really does. The last ten minutes is nothing more than a conclusion to an hour of unimportant issues that reveal very little of Reznik’s inner psyche, and sadly the conclusion is anticlimactic and dumb.
Like I stated, I already knew how it was going to end, even though I wasn’t trying. I hate it when that happens. I wanted to be entertained, but most of the performances were rather wooden and staged, keeping me from being emotionally involved in what would happen to them. Most of the time when I go to a movie, I don’t try to think too hard about what’s going to happen, because I’m more interested in the entertainment aspect of a film than I am in the mystery. Sometimes it’s the other way around (as in Memento), but usually it’s my involvement of the storyline that throws me into the mystery, and starts to make me try to figure things out.
With The Machinist, I was expecting an interesting suspense/thriller with some mental mystery thrown in, but all I really got was a sad attempt at the former. Instead, I sat through an hour and a half of boring red herrings, and because of the clues that were shoved down my throat, any sense of mystery was dissolved, and the final payback was far from satisfying after sitting through numerous moments of Reznik just being paranoid and having altered visions of reality.

I don’t recommend The Machinist unless you’re a huge fan of Bale and looking to complete a viewing list of his films or something. It’s pretty boring, pointless and unoriginal. Bale is alright in it, but sadly the movie doesn’t make up for his efforts.

Grade: D+