FEEL BALE'S LOSS IN 'MACHINIST'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

THE GIMMICK almost overwhelms the content of ``The Machinist.''

The fact that Christian Bale lost 63 pounds to play a guy who hasn't slept for a year - and removes his shirt enough to keep reminding us of his walking skeleton status - makes us worry as much about the actor as we do about his troubled, delirious character.

Set in a color-drained, cobalt-tinged twilight Los Angeles of the soul (the film was actually shot in and around Barcelona, Spain), ``Machinist'' works the tried-and-true ``Memento'' formula of a guy trying to figure out strange occurrences without the full benefit of his own memory. Director Brad Anderson (``Next Stop Wonderland,'' ``Session 9'') isn't working with material quite as clever as that was. Scott Kosar's screenplay is more psychological mood piece than crackerjack puzzle mystery. But Anderson does keep a fairly predictable, deeply depressing plot line engrossing for most of the way.

Bale plays Trevor Reznik. Yes, he works in a machine shop, where the foreman is on his spacey case and a screw-up on his part ends up costing a colleague his arm. But that wasn't really Reznik's fault; Ivan (John Sharian), a weird new hire who looks fresh out of Folsom, or maybe Hades, distracted him at a crucial moment.

But Reznik does have other things on his mind. Someone is creeping into his cruddy apartment and leaving alarming notes on the refrigerator. He might be being played - or is it more like loved? - by the sad but plucky hooker he visits now and then. She's played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, who brings assured professionalism - but nothing new - to a role she's done half a dozen times before.

Reznik would actually like to be loved by Marie (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon), the single-parent waitress who serves him pie at an airport restaurant. Usually paranoid and grim, Reznik turns upbeat and charming around Marie. He wheedles a trip to an amusement park with her and her son. But when the ``Route 666'' fun-house ride turns disturbingly personal, it's evident that whatever Reznik may learn about his tormentors and his own fuzzy past, his waking nightmare is never going to end.

Bless his heart (which you can practically see beating through his rib cage), Bale throws himself into Reznik's tortured existence with all his spirit and ability. If he can get half of this film's masochistic mania into next summer's Batman film - which, interestingly, is being directed by ``Memento's'' Christopher Nolan - it should finally be the film that does justice to the comic books.

For ``The Machinist,'' though, it can't help but seem like too much commitment to a ``Twilight Zone'' concept that Rod Serling and many more have exploited.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

THE MACHINIST - Three stars

(R: violence, sex, nudity, language, children in jeopardy)

Starring: Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, John Sharian, Michael Ironside.

Director: Brad Anderson.

Running time: 1 hr. 42 min.

Playing: Laemmle Sunset 5, West Hollywood; Landmark NuWilshire, Santa Monica.

In a nutshell: Bale dropped an alarming 63 pounds to play the haunted insomniac protagonist whose mind and memory are going the way of his emaciated body. An eerie enough head trip, but hardly worth such a sacrifice.

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Sleeplessness is the least of Christian Bale's problems in ``The Machinist.''