The Machinist

This much you know: to prepare for his role in The Machinist, Christian Bale transformed himself from stud to skeleton. The result is astonishing. Those brawny shoulders from American Psycho are reduced to mere chicken bones; he looks like he belongs not in a feature film, but in a National Geographic show on malnutrition.

Typically, this kind of transformation, while eye-popping, isn't enough to save a bad movie. Think Stallone and Copland. Self-sacrifice is great and all, but sometimes it's just a gimmick. So it comes as something of a surprise"”a thrilling one"”that Bale's dedication to the role is matched, even surpassed, by the hair-raising quality of the film itself. The Machinist is creepy, uncomfortable, and smart; every second crackles with gloomy suspense.

Bale stars as the super-skinny Trevor Reznik, who hasn't slept in a year. (No explanation is given.) And he looks it. Trevor stumbles through the world with only the thinnest of threads to reality. He's lonely, haunted, and desperate. Trevor has a job as a, well, machinist, working at a sinister factory that seems like something straight out of the Industrial Revolution.

At first subtly, and then more overtly, we begin to see cracks in Trevor's hellish reality. Director Brad Anderson (Session 9) plays a devilish game with our expectations and memory. For instance, every time Trevor looks at the clock, it's exactly 1:30. The second time it happens you're not sure if you saw it correctly; the third time it's downright chilling. A slew of other details"”a water tower, a cigarette lighter, even snippets of conversation"”all seemingly innocuous, recur again and again, inviting the audience to join in on Trevor's madness.

Trevor soon meets a new coworker, Ivan (John Sharion), a creepy, sketchy-looking, sunglasses-in-daylight type of ambiguous bad guy. Ivan seems to drift in and out of the movie, and, more to the point, in and out of Trevor's consciousness. It's clear that something doesn't quite add up with Ivan, and that mental discomfort, almost Lynchian, fuels the film with an ample supply of dramatic tension.

The true genius of The Machinist is its restraint. For all its psychological horror, there's very little "horror" actually shown onscreen. Anderson excels at hints and feints, at suggestions of dread, but never the real thing itself. The slow ride up the roller coaster is always more scary than the split-second plunge, a phenomenon that Anderson exploits to full effect. It's a refreshing change from the hack-and-slash of mainstream horror films. For instance, every time that Trevor looks at the refrigerator, there's a new post-it note stuck to the door. A hangman is drawn on the note with some fill-in-the-blank letters, and each note brings a different letter (sort of

a Wheel of Fortune from hell.) It's a frighteningly good device, and the appearance of those notes is more menacing than any volume of blood.

The Machinist is a loving tribute to noir, from the mysterious origins of the protagonist to the washed-out color scheme. Anderson soaks the film in muted blues and grays, whites and blacks; even a sunny day in the park feels like it should be midnight. The color palette of the movie is as bare-boned as Bale's scrawny physique. The cumulative effect of this visual bleaching, combined with an excellent score from Roque Banos, is to put us in the same sleepy and delirious mindset as Trevor.

The supporting cast is solid, if not particularly memorable. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays one of Trevor's only friend, Stevie, who's also a likable hooker. (Quick aside: isn't every hooker in the movies a likable hooker? Name three movie-hookers that aren't"”deep down"”little angles. I'll make it easier. Name one.) But this is Bale's film. He's in every single scene, all 46 pounds of him, and it's his stoic paranoia that sells every second.

At a certain point, the less said about The Machinist the better. As you would expect, those creepy details all coalesce to mean something, but to comment on that meaning would cheapen the film. Suffice it to say, the overall conclusion"”again, mum's the word"”might be less than fully satisfying. Pish posh. Even if lacks a thunderous ending, The Machinist is a stylish trip that's well worth taking.

Movie Grade: A