If you're a sucker for movies where the lead actor actually mutilates himself in the name of art — and hey, who isn't? — then you're going to love The Machinist. This artsy, elaborately angsty creepfest skirts the edges of exploitation, blatantly catering to the most lurid cravings for sideshow sensationalism, while sparing sensitive viewers the indignity of having to deal with images of what in less PC times used to be called freaks. The Machinist neatly sidesteps the problem by paying a handsome, normally proportioned movie star big bucks to physically transform himself into a freak (you should excuse the expression). It's an ingenious ploy, for sure, and an effective one, too. The only problem is now what to do with all those real, out-of-work freaks.
Anyway, this is the movie where Christian Bale sheds his pretty-boy image and some 60 pounds in order to play a tortured, skeletal loner who hasn't slept for a year and can't seem to distinguish between what's real and what's not. (Fear not — Bale apparently suffered no permanent damage from his Xtreme Diet and will, in fact, flex his newly reconstituted muscles as next season's Batman — but he does cut a creepy figure here, to be sure.) With his seriously sunken eyes and bruised, sallow flesh stretched painfully tight over bones sharply protruding everywhere, Trevor Reznik (Bale) is a human skeleton, like something out of an infomercial on starving children in sub-Saharan Africa.
Trevor's actually even less than a skeleton — he's a ghost. More specifically, he seems to be the movie's metaphor for what might be called the disintegrating human condition. He's barely there at all, a vapor haunting all-night diners and the bedrooms of hookers who tell him, "If you were any thinner you wouldn't exist."
This is the sort of movie where lines like that get repeated not once but several times, just for effect (this is a movie, after all, that is all about effect). There's no such thing as an off-the-cuff remark here; when someone drawls, "Don't disappear on me," it's a David Lynch moment where the mundane becomes a signifier of cosmic dread. Events accumulate in strange, inexplicable patterns and every character, word and action — even inanimate objects, like a cup of coffee — begins to seem ominous. A spooky, theremin-driven score, seemingly grafted whole from some barely remembered '50s sci-fi movie, is all that's needed to complete the effect.
The film unfolds and Trevor slips deeper and deeper into what appears to be a delusional state, although the movie teases us with the possibility that maybe he really is the victim of some vast, bizarre conspiracy aimed at costing him his job, his sanity, maybe even his life. A smirking, bald-headed man in sunglasses keeps showing up everywhere; little post-it notes with cryptic messages begin appearing on Trevor's fridge; a friend's child has a violent seizure while accompanying Trevor on a graphic amusement park ride through Hell; and then there's that constant drip-drip-dripping and that strange smell coming from his apartment…
It's conceivable that the entire movie is Trevor's hallucination — he's as unreliable a narrator as the ones behind the wheel in Fight Club or Cronenberg's Spider or Polanski's Repulsion — and we're encouraged from the get-go to take everything we see with as many grains of salt as possible. The is-it-or-isn't-it reality submitted for our approval in The Machinist is far from inviting, but there's no denying that it manages to grab us from the first frame and not let go. It all ends with a final twist that reshuffles the deck by shedding new light on everything that's come before, but by then the movie's spent so much time wallowing in velvety darkness that no amount of illumination is likely to pull us up out of the pit. If you don't mind murky, confined spaces, though, you could do a lot worse.
On a lighter note, the vampire extravaganza Blade: Trinity is also opening this week, and compared to The Machinist it's practically a comedy. Unfortunately, it's not a very good comedy.
Wesley Snipes returns as the iconic, elaborately tattooed hybrid human-vampire, but this time he's reduced to a minor character in his own movie, overshadowed by a pair of young, vampire-hunting hipsters. One is Jessica Biel, who slinks around exposing her midriff when not kicking vampire butt, and the other is Ryan Reynolds — yep, the guy who played Van Wilder — who engages in incessant, lively banter with Blade and supplies most of the movie's comedic moments. Between the banter and all the buddy-cop conventions, this could almost be Blade: Another 48 Hours.
I'm a fan of the two previous Blade movies, particularly the last one, but there's virtually none of the lush, comic-book horror of those films to be found here. If it weren't for all the vampires, Blade: Trinity could be almost any faceless, Hollywood action-comedy, complete with wall-to-wall explosions, pedestrian fight scenes, thumping hippy-hoppy score and headache-inducing editing. We quickly become numb to all the blood, guts and speed, and there really isn't much spooky stuff to be found, much less atmosphere. The scariest bits here are a withered-up Kris Kristofferson (on screen for blessedly brief moments) and a vampiric Parker Posey, looking much like one of those dysfunctional junkies she plays in all those indie films, only with sharper teeth and worse hair.
Blade: Trinity also features no less a baddie than Dracula himself (now known simply as Drake), although he's a bland, gold-chain-wearing beefcake, shirt unbuttoned to display the bulging pecs where his acting ability apparently resides. There are moments where the movie hints at being smarter or at least hipper than it lets on (Eric Bogosian shows up briefly, and we even see flashes of William Shatner's Esperanto cult classic, Incubus), but ultimately, this is just a sad little hack job that wants desperately to be liked. A Blade movie with fart jokes, anyone? Say it ain't so.
This article appears in Dec 8-14, 2004.