The Machinist

I really wish the sum of the parts of this movie equaled what it suggests. I really want to like this movie, but it never came together for me like I wanted it to. The movie feels like David Fincher directing a Hitchcockian psychological thriller, a la Vertigo. It has that gritty, dirty, street-level human feel to it, but it has the cerebral, artsy, nothing-is-as-it-seems psychology of Hitchcock. Christian Bale does an excellent job as Trevor, a man rapidly losing weight and who hasn't slept in a year, and is starting to see things and believe in a vast conspiracy pointed at him. Every problem of this movie can be laid at the faulty logic of the script. For starters, Trevor hasn't slept in a year, except he keeps nodding off. By the end, you get an explanation why, but it isn't supernatural, which just makes the idea of someone not sleeping in a year hard to swallow. Once you trip over that unbelievable hurdle, you stumble into the next one; that only now, after a year of supposedly not sleeping, does Trevor start to have hallucinations. People who have attempted to set the record for staying awake -- which, by the last recorded attempt, was 18 days and change -- have experienced paranoid, hallucinations, and other mental illness symptoms. There is just no way Trevor hasn't started seeing things and acted loopy before a year. Other than memory issues (which the movie acknowledges), it's hard to swallow he is now suddenly having issues holding onto his sanity. But then comes the biggest problem of all. The movie sets up his descent into hallucinatory madness early on. You, the viewer, start to question everything. The movie, for whatever reason, plays into this until the big reveal; at that point, the movie shows you all the things that weren't real, as if it were a big surprise. The problem is, it's been telling you to not trust what you're seeing, so how exactly is this a twist? Having "everything you've seen was a hallucination" be the twist doesn't work when the movie has been screaming that from the first frame. Yeah, the WHY of it all is new information, but trying then to integrate it into what we've seen causes plot holes. It's as if the movie knows its twist is unsatisfactory and illogical and tries to make you as confused and paranoid as Trevor, but in doing so, exposes that the tapestry of its story is totally threadbare. It's a shame, too, because the acting in the movie is excellent. Christian Bale does such a phenomenal job, as he always does. Ditto Jennifer Jason Leigh, who I've never seen put in a bad performance. The supporting characters are all very good. The visual direction is commendable, such as the color palate of the movie being washed out and muted except for Ivan and his car, which is vibrant and almost alarming. There's such great character work here from all sides, and the movie looks and sounds amazing, but it's in the service of a script that is as broken and confused as its protagonist. I'm sure for some, the journey is everything here. I wish it was for me. Because the destination spoiled the journey for me.