This reminded me of Inception, except that whereas Christopher Nolan’s 2010 thriller used a sci-fi premise, this uses hypnosis as the excuse for the mental jujitsu that supports its puzzle-like structure. James McAvoy has the role at the center of this puzzle; its his forgotten memory that the hypnotist (Rosario Dawson) is trying to get at, on behalf of a quartet of London art thieves whose leader is played by Vincent Cassel. McAvoy’s character, who works for an auction house, has been knocked on the head during the robbery.
Essentially, director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 127 Hours), uses the hypnosis idea to keep you wondering about what is true and false, guessing about the characters’ (especially the therapist’s) motivations, and speculating about who will wind up killing whom. The script is by John Hodge, who wrote several of Boyle’s early films, and Joe Ahearne, who made a version of this for British television in 2001. It extremely slick but the imagery is not quite as visually arresting as in Insomnia, and whereas the Nolan film sidestepped questions about unreality by inventing a fictional technology, the hypnotism angle makes, say, Woody Allen’s comedy The Curse of the Jade Scorpion look like a primer on the subject.
This is not to say you won’t enjoy this, provided you accept that the characters will be meaningless appendages to the twisty plot, which itself will be meaningless flim-flammery, the movie equivalent of a Rubik’s cube. There is one thing that is surprisingly believable: for once, when a car catches fire, it doesn’t immediately blow up. So, keep an eye out for that.
IMDb link
viewed 4/18/13 7:35 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 4/18/13
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