Review of The Machinist (2004) by Del H — 31 May 2014

When I first heard about this movie I was amazed by Christian Bale's commitment to the role, this was two years ago, yes another movie I held off for a couple of years for no good reason, I guess it's just one of those things that happen in life.

When it started though I thought the film would glamorise the fact that Bale performed some serious method work for the film and keep reminding us how amazing he is by making him not have a shirt on for quite a long time but quite soon I forgot about this and the movie moved on.

It definitely helped the mood of the movie to have Bale be so thin, can't have been good for him, I'm sure he was quite ill at some point but it helps the believability and if you think that's worth it is up to you.

Like I said it helped the believability but even if he didn't half kill himself the story is more than enough to keep someone interested, it's so smart, layered and actually makes sense and doesn't come off as some pretentious mess.

Throughout watching the movie it just keeps asking more and more questions and gets more and more confusing and I just kept thinking to myself this better had be leading up to something and something actually good and I was not disappointed but I can't help but feel Bale is the reason anyone knows about this, he's the only actor in the movie to have any kind of status behind him, although everyone does do a good job, and it's quite a lot of the reason why people know about this movie, hell it's the reason I knew about it.

Which is good and bad, it's good because it brings notoriety to a smaller film but then is the only reason anyone knows about it. Can't help but feel if there was a smaller star in the role, a) it wouldn't work so well and b) no one would know about this.

Besides all that, the movie is excellently filmed and the colors really help set the tone, everything is clear and beautiful to look at. Also, some of the music sounds like it belongs in a Charlie Chaplin film, it's so strange and sounds out of place at first but then it all fits into place.

Only negative I have is that it is questionable how some scenes end, doesn't really affect a lot of them but for example there's a scene where Trevor has to get out of a place he is in and has to choose a path, he picks one and then just fades to how he gets out.

.. Oh... Thanks movie? No explanation or visual aid to show us what he had to do? Okay then, thank you. Sometimes the way the scene would end I thought it might have been a dream or something. I'd have also liked a bit more ambiguity to the whole theme of the movie as opposed to being told what happens, but at least there is a concrete solution to it all like I said so I can't really dislike it.

All in all, it's a great movie that unfolds very naturally and fluidly after asking so many questions for so long.