Though the film starts slowly, it unfolds irresistibly, thanks mainly to Bale's full-bodied, soulful performance.
Comment
10/22/04
The Machinist (2004)
75
%
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.
Runtime: 1 hr 43 mins
Genre: Dramas
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... [More]
Starring: Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, Michael Ironside
Director: Brad Anderson
Reviews for The Machinist
Anderson does keep a fairly predictable, deeply depressing plot line engrossing for most of the way.
10/22/04
A meticulously complex story of guilt and paranoia.
10/22/04
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.
10/22/04
This is not a horror film, but it is horrifying.
10/22/04
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.
10/22/04
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.
10/21/04
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.
10/21/04
Bale, always a nervy, risk-taking actor, gives a haunting performance of fierce concentration that goes beyond his dramatic weight loss.
10/21/04
Top CriticChristian 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.
10/21/04
Top CriticEffectively weirded-out chiller about a factory worker who may - or may not - be a cold-blooded killer. Bale is brilliant.
10/21/04
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.
10/21/04
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.
10/20/04
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.
10/20/04
A grimy, excessively art-directed psychological horror flick.
10/20/04
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.
10/19/04
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10/19/04
Covers familiar ground with elegance, teasing out its twists and turns in a way that seems natural rather than contrived.
10/19/04
As its stricken hero's prominently posed copies of Kafka and Dostoyevsky suggest, the movie takes itself more seriously than it should.
10/19/04
A fairly standard issue psychological thriller, although Christian Bale's physical transformation for this film is truly astonishing.
10/19/04
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