Product Description

While attempting to deal with the insomnia that has plagued him for a year, troubled factory worker Christian Bale begins receiving cryptic notes and having visions of a shadowy colleague. Rapidly shedding pounds due to fatigue, he attempts to make sense of the strange occurrences with the help of a beautiful waitress (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon) and a kindly prostitute (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Mesmerizing, Hitchcockian thriller co-stars John Sharian, Michael Ironside. 101 min. Widescreen; Soundtracks: English Dolby TrueHD 5.1, French Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1; Subtitles: English (SDH), French, Portuguese, Spanish; audio commentary; featurette; deleted scenes; theatrical trailer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10246 in DVD
• Brand: BALE,CHRISTIAN
• Released on: 2009-05-19
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Portuguese, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French, Spanish
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 101 minutes

Amazon.com
As a bleak and chilling mood piece, The Machinist gets under your skin and stays there. Christian Bale threw himself into the title role with such devotion that he shed an alarming 63 pounds to play Trevor Reznik (talk about "starving artist"!), a factory worker who hasn't slept in a year. He's haunted by some mysterious occurrence that turned him into a paranoid husk, sleepwalking a fine line between harsh reality and nightmare fantasy--a state of mind that leaves him looking disturbingly gaunt and skeletal in appearance. (It's no exaggeration to say that Bale resembles a Holocaust survivor from vintage Nazi-camp liberation newsreels.) In a cinematic territory far removed from his 1998 romantic comedy Next Stop Wonderland, director Brad Anderson orchestrates a grimy, nocturnal world of washed-out blues and grays, as Trevor struggles to assemble the clues of his psychological conundrum. With a friendly hooker (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and airport waitress (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón) as his only stable links to sanity, Trevor reaches critical mass and seems ready to implode just as The Machinist reveals its secrets. For those who don't mind a trip to hell with a theremin-laced soundtrack, The Machinist seems primed for long-term status as a cult thriller on the edge. --Jeff Shannon

From The New Yorker
Christian Bale lost a third of his body weight for this hallucinogenic thriller about a sleep-deprived industrial worker with a guilty conscience. His emaciated frame is hard to watch, and the cinematography doesn't help matters. Shot in shades of green and yellow, the film has a gangrenous quality that enhances the level of foreboding. The over-all effect is gripping, like the flu. -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker