Watching Hypnotic and noting its mid-2000 mentality makes all the more sense when you know that Robert Rodriguez wrote the screenplay back in 2002, with the filmmaker calling it one of his favourite stories that he’s created. It may have been written in 2002 but the film very much lives in the shadow of Christopher Nolan’s 2010 mind-tripper Inception, but in classic Rodriguez fashion this film is directed with much more of a grin; though that knowing wink is the only familiar Rodriguez trait here, as any of the flair felt through previous productions – From Dusk Till Dawn, Desperado, Spy Kids, etc – isn’t on display.
Curiously dated the film may be – and sadly getting quite shafted in its minimal fanfared release – Hypnotic is gloriously silly, but consistently entertaining as it plays fast and loose with its mystic premise and keeps us as an audience hooked with every wild turn over the course of its brisk 94 minutes. I’m sure it’ll come and go in cinemas before finding itself on a streaming service – where everyone on Twitter will cry foul that no one told them how good it was – but in a theatrical period of continual blockbusters and “event movies”, something like Hypnotic deserves all the more of a look-in as a welcome antidote.
Ben Affleck, seemingly wanting his own revisit of the genre pieces he littered his early-to-mid-2000’s career with, leads the charge as Danny Rourke, a detective who is desperately seeking the whereabouts of his missing daughter; her supposed abduction opening up the film and setting the increasingly-twisted narrative in play. As he worries that the trail to find her is turning cold, things get considerably warmer when a tip leads him to a bank heist, one that is being executed by seemingly unconnected strangers. A photo of his daughter is placed at the scene, and Rourke eventually follows the clues to a psychic, Diana (Alice Braga), who informs him of a collective of “hypnotics” – psychics who hone the ability to shape people’s perception of reality and can instruct them to do their bidding.
The hypnosis acts allow Rodriguez to have an awful lot of fun with bending reality and the visual possibilities that come with such. He doesn’t go all out in the type of manner we may expect, but somehow keeping things as grounded as possible allows Hypnotic to remain relatively unpretentious. Braga is initially burdened with the type of role that unloads exposition for us to catch up, but she then settles into the fantastic silliness of it all, and as the villainous archetype of William Fichtner‘s Dellrayne comes further into play and the twist upon twist temperament takes a stronghold, it all culminates in an action spectacle that doesn’t make too much sense, but oh how gloriously fun it truly all is on the surface.
Really, you can’t get more hypnotic than a throwback effort that actually commits to its yesteryear personality. Whilst Rodriguez would like you to believe that Affleck’s attachment makes Hypnotic something of an A-tier project, when the film embraces genre cheese and convenience and settles for what it truly is at its core – a B-movie – it’s all the more exciting and acceptedly nonsensical.
THREE AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Hypnotic is now screening in Australian theatres.
