The Machinist Review

Trevor Reznik has not slept in a year, and Christian Bale starves himself down to something close to a skeleton to prove it. The body is the argument: ribs like a xylophone, a spine you can count, a man who looks wrong standing next to anyone else in the frame. Brad Anderson and cinematographer Xavi Gimenez drain almost all the warmth out of Barcelona standing in for an anonymous American city, leaving a green and grey wash that makes fluorescent light feel like an accusation.

The machine shop sequence where Miller loses his arm is staged with real dread, and the amusement park ride called Route 666 is a fine piece of sustained unease. What lets it down is the script. Scott Kosar builds toward a reveal that anyone who has seen Jacob's Ladder or read a paperback about repressed guilt will call an hour early, and the hangman game on the refrigerator notes is closer to a puzzle box than to a nightmare.

Jennifer Jason Leigh gives Stevie more interior life than the writing asks for, and Michael Ironside makes his few minutes count. Bale's work here is exact rather than showy, which is why the ending lands at all.