195 out of 205 people found the following review helpful:

Cult Classic!

Alistair McFarlane from Leeds, England, 25th March, 2005

Christian Bale looking his worst and acting at his best. If you like films that make you think, then this film is awesome and not to be missed. Though it's sinistercism will mean it's not everybones cup of tea. Scarred throughout with an underlying dark feel to it. The machinist takes you into the mind of Bale's charachter Trevor who suffers from extreme insomnia. As the film progresses it allows you and Trevor to simultaneously unravel the trail of clues leading to the cause of his insomnia. The backdrop of the average dull toned town that he lives in adds even more realism to this must see film.

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52 out of 62 people found the following review helpful:

Fantastic!

Amichaelglg from Surrey, 2nd May, 2005

This was one of the BEST films I have seen for a very very long time. Although the previous post said it was predicatble...Well, it is like saying The Sixth Sense was predicatble !
If you have similar tastes to me and loved Gladiator, The Sixth Sense, Butterfly Effect, Assault On Precinct 13, The Notebook, and many others that don't initially spring to mind then you must SEE this film. I just cannot praise it highly enough !

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50 out of 61 people found the following review helpful:

A movie that will make you think.

Felicity from Horsham, West Sussex, 9th April, 2005

This is a truly wonderful and scary movie. Christian Bale looks scarier even than his character in American Psycho, yet this has to be his best role to date. This film will keep you guessing until the end.

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35 out of 39 people found the following review helpful:

Intriguing, infuriating insomniac

ATfilmcritic from London, 17th March, 2005

Chilling, compelling psychological mystery, which, despite a mostly predictable denouement, remains gripping and disturbing from beginning to end; and the incohesive whole is driven fiercely by Bale’s astonishing commitment.

His ferocious, powerful performance should be marked down as one of the greatest human achievements in cinema- starved down to an unrecognizable bare-bones of a person (“If you were any thinner…you wouldn’t exist”), Bale’s extraordinary feat of losing 63 pounds, transforming his usual muscular self into a skeletal ghost, is the greatest physical weight loss in film history. His dedication shows, and ultimately lifts the film from mediocrity.

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Another gap in the wall

DunkH from , 12th March, 2010

The concept is great, but like lots of other Hollywood offerings there are massive gaps in the story. It's a classic plot of a guy going mad through tiredness, but the reasons why are not explained... The plot relies on the idea that someone has been awake for a year which is not believable, it would be fine to have someone who is tired and thin and overworked but the line the fiilm is sold on is 'Man goes crazy after not sleeping for a year', why not have the monotony of work as 'sleep', an inteligent audience would surely understand this better? The film makers obviously have read Franz Kafka, for the paranoiai comes straight from 'The Trial' , and paranonia is expressed in all the traditional Hollywood methods. A true triumpth of style over content, eg we have muted colours but the film is not in black and white, why bother doing this? It looks like the director wants to evoke black and white but doesn't have the balls to do so. So we have realistic industrial buildings (with great actors playing the blue colar workers) but then a couple of hollywood car chase scenes thrown in, and to make them fit the colours are just muted, it's still obviously a sunny hollywood car chase! The plot seems to have been put together by a comitee! Half way through there is a love intrest which is just thown in because there is no other plot, all I can say is that it is a waste as the actors and camerawork are great but in this case the US trying to make a B&W European style film just doesnt work. I would say check out some of Krzysztof Kieślowski's films instead to get a grittier version of the ideas in this film.

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the machinist

shaz3 from , 11th March, 2010

pretty dark and mucked up film but i enjoyed it id give it a 3 star rating mr bale looks terribly thin one wonders if he actually lost all that weight for the part?

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I want the 1 hour and 30 mins back of my life!

A Customer from Glasgow, 9th March, 2010

Seriously people, DO NOT waste your time with this movie. Me and my Boyfriend were really looking forward to watching it as we like Christain Bale and what a shock we got. The amount of weight he had to loose for the film was disgusting, there was no real story it was pretty bland. I'm so glad i didnt waste my money buying it, it says its a 'thriller' well i can asure you its most defos not!

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THE Machinist ,LOVE IT

Declan6107 from , 20th February, 2010

A very great cast and the film keeps ya glued till watching it all the way.. 10 out of 10 rent it out..!!!!

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