Retrospective Film Review

The Machinist (2004) • 20 Years Later — Christian Bale takes a trip to the dark side in creepy thriller

An industrial worker who hasn’t slept in a year begins to doubt his own sanity.

Just before Christian Bale donned the black cape for Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins (2005), the then-not-quite uber-famous actor took on a much darker role, playing the deeply disturbed, emaciated, and sleep-deprived Trevor Reznik-whose reality is a waking nightmare, where what’s real and what’s not is very much up for debate.

The film starts with Reznik inside an apartment, rolling up a body in a rug; there’s blood on his gaunt face and he looks exhausted. Something nasty has happened here. Cut to the next scene: he’s taking the rolled-up body out of his pick-up truck and carrying it down to a slipway by the sea. Of course, the body is heavy — especially for someone so thin — as a result, he drops the rug/body down onto the concrete, but it doesn’t go any further. He then kicks it and it starts rolling down the slipway, before we see anything else, a torchlight is shining off in…