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Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale) has quite some problems, he hasn't slept
in over a year, & he's so skinny that one wonders if he hasn't eaten
anything at least as long. At work - he handles heavy machinery - nobody
likes him, & his only real friend is Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh),
the hooker from next door.
When he one day causes his colleague Miller (Michael Ironside) to lose
an arm when handling machinery, that doesn't help much, neither does it
help when he claims that he was distracted by Ivan (John Sharian), another
colleague of his ... especially since noone else in the factory knows any
Ivan, in fact there's no Ivan in the company's employ. When Trevor
accompanies Maria (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón) & her son Nicholas (Matthew
Romero Moore) to an amusemsent park one day, which sounds romantic enough,
this turns into desaster too, when Nicholas, on a ride, has an epileptic
attack ... Not long afterwards, Trevor's own hand gets stuck in a machine
& the machine gets turned on, almost tearing his arm of, & he
suspects foul play, but is thrown out of his job when wildly accusing
people. Soon he figures that Miller must have wanted revenge, drives to
his place & makes more wild accusations, which lead to nothing ...
then though he sees Ivan just passing by in his red convertible &
chases it through half the city ... with little success. But he has
remembered the licence plate numbers, & now runs in front of the next
car, just to report a hit-&-run accident (using Ivan's plate number)
& this way get Ivan's adress. But at the police they tell him that the
red convertible was his own car that was totally destroyed in a car
accident a year ago ... It seems, only Stevie is there for him now, she
even tells him she would stop being a hooker just for him, which sounds
great, until he has delusions that she is really in league with Ivan, who
is her psycho-ex - & upon these wild accusations she throws him out. Trevor
next turns to Maria, but at the café she works at, he learns that she
doesn't work there at all, has never worked there (might be a figment of
his imagination, or a part of the conspiracy). Arriving home again, he
finds Ivan waiting for him, who opens Trevor's eyes to quite a few things
(even if he also might be a figment of Trevor's imagination): A year ago,
Trevor, still driving his red convertible, was involved in a hit-&-run
accident, incidently he has killed a little boy whom he later
imagined to be Nicholas, & the boys mother, whom he saw running to her
child in his rear mirror, he imagined as Maria. Trevor has actually made
all of them up to block out his guilt. But when Trevor kills Ivan, &
realizes he just can't, it becomes clear that Ivan is his conscience,
having come to haunt him. In the end Trevor gives himself up to the
police .. but at least now he can sleep again. Mainly
(in-)famous because lead actor Christian Bale lost 30 kilograms for the
role, the film behind this stunt is not too bad either, a creepy mystery
that manages to uphold an atmosphere of unease throughout. However at the
same time the film does give away too much too soon without wanting it -
about halfway through the movie it has become pretty clear that Trevor was
involved in a hit-&-run accident -, & thus fails to surprise as
much as it should have in
the end, which is a bit of a letdown.
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