Trance Reviews

Quite enjoyed the twisty ride. And no one does smarmy better than Vincent Cassel.

Very stylish, Danny Boyle. Very stylish.

Got a kick out of this old school noirish thriller wherein hypnosis and amnesia (neither of which really exist except in the flickers, kid) play parts as central as an stolen classic painting that everyone's after (the object d'desire as it were, like the Maltese Falcon or the Pink Panther for that matter) in this film. Good workingman's whodunnit, but Ms.Dawson steals the movie in one eye-popping two second clip ... !

"Trance" sees director Danny Boyle return to the kind of kinetic sensory-overload-with-attitude that harkens back to his early days of "Trainspotting" glory. And while the images are undeniably beautiful, and the three main cast members are all excellent, nothing can save a story that veers quickly and remorselessly into nonsense territory. In fact, what's frustrating about the movie is that it uses its buckets of disorienting style in an attempt to distract audiences from a storyline that progressively gives up every thread of logic, as it transforms from an enjoyable heist movie with a psychological twist in to a melodramatic "Inception"-esque romance/thriller with a bonkers action-movie finale, all of which comes off as tonally confused as it sounds. Beautiful, yes, but in the end, no amount of captivating visuals are enough to lull the audience into forgetting the movie's many flaws.

Danny Boyle's "Trance" is a stylish, rather shallow film about the power of hypnosis. Boyle's major concern on this project was to create a great soundtrack; he certainly achieved that. The music is fantastic. My recommendation: skip the movie and buy the soundtrack.

I wish Boyle had put as much work into the story as he put into the music and cinematography. "Trance" looks great and sounds great, but the story is shallow. There are lots of twists and turns in the plot, but no real depth.

A likable James McAvoy plays an employee at an upper-echelon auction house in London. His job is to prevent multi-million-dollar artwork from getting stolen. Early in the film, there is a well-organized heist ending in a hand-to-hand battle between McAvoy and the thieves' leader, played with almost no characterization by Vincent Cassel. (Cassel appears to have been hired simply because Boyle wanted the chief thug to look intelligent and French. That's the superficial level on which the film operates. Cassel is almost an extra, despite having quite a bit of screen time.)

Cassel knocks McAvoy out and grabs the case containing the painting. But mysteriously, the case ends up containing an empty frame. The canvas itself is gone. Like a magic trick. Eventually this is explained, and it's not that big a deal. McAvoy had simply used a razor blade to cut the canvas out of the frame before inserting the frame in the case. He then absconded with the rolled-up canvas.

But where's the canvas? That becomes the central mystery. He claims not to remember what he did with it, and he appears to be telling the truth. Did he suffer a brain injury during the scuffle with Cassel? Or did he suppress the memory due to all the anxiety and fear?

Enter Rosario Dawson, playing a professional, high-end hypnotist. Her job is to help him uncover the memory. But complications ensue. I won't spoil the surprises, which are fairly good. I'll just say that there's more going on with the hypnotist than meets the eye, and these secrets are gradually revealed.

The problem is that through all the plot turns, I lost interest in the characters. I just didn't care who ended up being the good guy or the bad guy. The characters were such thin caricatures that it's hard to care about any of them. Every time Boyle had an opportunity to develop a character, he turned up the music to deafening levels to drown out the dialogue. "Trance" is more a music video than a film.

There is interesting subject matter. If Boyle had spent more time in story development, this could have turned into a great film. But Boyle kept everything at such a superficial level that the end-product is rather underwhelming.

Danny Boyle is a director that can make anything watchable. The man made an entire movie about a dude trapped under a rock and it was spellbinding. With that in mind, he does his very best to turn the trippy, Inception-like crime thriller Trance into a workable, watchable experience for the audience. The main issue is that the movie is so busy that once it slows down you realize there really isn't anything going on. James McAvoy plays an art auctioneer who stashed a valuable painting during a heist. He undergoes hypnotherapy by Rosario Dawson so the crooks can determine where the loot resides. The premise allows for plenty of fake-outs, and you'll be conditioned to doubt just about everything you see on screen. The film does a nice job of applying that doubt to the characters as well; the good guys may not be so good and the bad guys may not be so bad. With Boyle's hyperkinetic visuals and some fast-paced editing, Trance is serviceable in the moment, but when the characters literally spell out everything you realize how shallow the movie is as well as these characters. The lone truly memorable moment is a scene where Dawson jets off to a bathroom, we hear an electronic buzzing, and she comes out fully nude, presenting herself as a shaven offering. The fact that this relates to an actual plot point is practically incidental. The movie isn't as smart or as fun or as entertaining as it thinks it is, and I wish Boyle had taken advantage of dream/mind mechanics and gone crazier with his visuals. Still, if you've got a couple hours, some low expectations, and a desire to see Rosario Dawson completely naked, it's worth at least one watch.

Nate's Grade: B-

After torture fails, gangsters hire a hypnotherapist to help their amnesiac comrade remember where he hid a stolen painting, but can they trust her not to play with the subject's mind? It's a good, if implausible, starting point for a psychological thriller, but the audience has no rooting interest among the major characters; and although the plot twists plenty, there's no mighty revelation at the end. After we find the painting we're left with an empty feeling.

'Trance'. A first rate thriller that toys with your mind nicely! The pace of the opening heist sequence, the imagery and direction throughout; A welcome return by Danny Boyle. McAvoy and Dawson, solid.

An auctioneer suffers head trauma during an art robbery that causes him to lose his memory, much to the chagrin of the perpetrators who employ a hypnotherapist to learn the whereabouts of the missing painting. Genre spanner Danny Boyle turns his hand to the heist movie in this mind bending psycho thriller that bears all the hallmarks of his otherwise eclectic projects. The film opens strongly with an exciting smash and grab in the vein of Guy Ritchie or Stephen Soderbergh as Vincent Cassell and his men lay siege to the auction house. The dramatic climax is also a nerve shredding explosion of violence and revelation but somewhere between, the surreal mish-mash of reality and psychology somehow fails to glue to two together; McAvoy's character is a little too schizophrenic to relate to and some of the twists and turns are not entirely convincing, feeling more like convenient plot devices than a believable story. Boyle's trademark brisk pacing certainly maintains the interest however and the strong cast make for a highly watchable and surreal heist movie. The biggest problem with Trance is that it shares a little too much common ground with Inception, which is a far more subtle, smart and sophisticated affair.

A very twisty turny thriller that keeps you on your toes, which is mesmerizing but also mind boggling and slightly bewildering!
Yes a interesting and well executed plot however it leaves you feeling left out slightly as not everything is explained well enough to enjoy!

Boyle's injection of energy and vibrancy means that, even if you're confused about elements of the plot, ''Trance'' is nonetheless captivating. The performances of the acting trio are excellent and Boyle's style along with Rick Smith's soundtrack creates a pulsating atmosphere. The flaws of ''Trance'' prevent it from joining the pantheon of truly great Danny Boyle films but it's still quite a remarkable watch.

Sometimes filmmakers have stories burning to be told and sometimes they have a type of storytelling they're itching to explore. TRANCE falls into the latter category, as Danny Boyle gets to exorcise all of his "Heist Movie" demons here. Filled with twist after twist, it's fairly satisfying as filmic explorations go.

James McAvoy is Simon, an auctioneer who loses a valuable painting and his memory when art thieves try to steal a Goya. He enlists the aid of a hypnotherapist (Rosario Dawson) in order to help recover the masterpiece. To discuss the relationships in this film would spoil the story, and let's face it, this film is ALL about its plot points.

From a script by Joe Ahearne and reportedly doctored by TRAINSPOTTING genius, John Hodge, TRANCE has the syncopated rhythms of that aforementioned film, especially in its use of voiceover. You can almost imagine the "Choose Life" speech fitting in perfectly. The evocative and constant use of music takes a page from DRIVE handbook. Boyle plays with stories within stories and mixes filmmaking technologies seamlessly. In the hypnosis scenes, he switches points of view and inserts characters into memories to constantly keep you guessing as to what is real and what's not.

I was reminded quite a bit of SIDE EFFECTS, Steve Soderbergh's pulp thriller genre exercise from earlier this year. Both directors seem to be having a bit of fun instead of making some passion project. While not entirely plot heavy, TRANCE peels back layer after layer to finally expose the "real" and sad story underneath it all.

At the heart of this are wonderfully engaging performances by McAvoy, who brings the right amount of sweetness Ewan McGregor usually brings to Boyle's films, Vincent Cassel, as an incredibly soulful head thief, and especially Dawson, who shows a heap-ton of command and range. She's ferocious, interesting, unpredictable and in one startling shot, literally naked. Filled with Boyle's usual narrative and cinematic tricks and with frequent collaborator, the great cinematographer, Anthony Dod Mantle, providing one sleek image after the other, TRANCE is best remembered for giving Dawson the richly deserved lead performance we've been waiting for, and as such, it's worth the price of admission alone.

At the exclusive auction house where he works, Simon Newton(James McAvoy) is told to never be a hero in the case of robbery. Ironically, the same lecture is apparently never given about possible villainy, as Simon is the inside man in a brilliantly carried out theft, at least until the part where he gets a concussion when he tries to hand over the priceless painting to Franck(Vincent Cassel), the gang's leader. And then there's the part where Franck does not get the painting he was expecting which is complicated by Simon's amnesia which no amount of torture will cure. Maybe hypnotherapy will work when Simon chooses Dr. Elizabeth Lamb(Rosario Dawson) at random. After she quickly gets onto the plan, instead of calling the police, she starts negotiating for a piece of the action.

"Trance" is a tricky visual game of Three-card monte wherein Danny Boyle subverts expectations to playful effect. Overall, there is less here on the usual song and dance about what is real or not than on the more intriguing topic of free will. As such, this is a labyrinthine plot that forces the viewer to pay attention, as there are clues scattered throughout. So, yes, the movie does play fair, even if there are some calculated omissions but isn't that always the case with memory? And I appreciate any attempt to further the audience's knowledge of art history but to be honest I prefer not to think of classic paintings in quite that way, thank you very much.

Danny Boyle has a very distinguishable style he uses in all of his films, and it is certainly going strong again in his latest film "Trance". The cinematography is fantastic, as usual, the acting is great, and the visuals and screenplay are hallucinatory. The film starts out intriguingly, with main character Simon (played by James McAvoy) explaining the procedure and steps taken to protect a piece of art when there is an attempt being made to steal one. I found it interesting in this beginning sequence that McAvoy spoke directly to the camera, and often stared right at it: that's a very interesting technique of Boyle having the fictional main character speak directly to the audience who are watching his "act". This is something I've never seen before in film: directly and purposely breaking the boundary between the world of the narrative and the world of the audience. Unfortunately, this interesting technique quickly ends and we are thrown a countless number of twists to the point where keeping up the first time through is nearly impossible. Like Inception, Trance is a film that needs to be seen again and again to properly understand and to discover new things within each succeeding viewing. I was potently confused by the plot, which is a problem... until future viewings, that is.

I really enjoyed Trance. Stylistically it works incredibly well. It looks like Danny Boyle. It sounds like Danny Boyle. And it unfolds in a captivating labyrinth that keeps you guessing right up till the end. McAvoy is great, as usual and Rosario Dawson is better than I remember her being in a long time. Feel free to let Trance put you under it's spell.

Simon (McAvoy), an employee at an upscale London art auctioneers, manages to stash away a £25 million valued Goya painting during a robbery masterminded by art thief Franck (Cassel), who knocks him unconscious before leaving with what he thinks is the painting. When Simon comes to he has no recollection of exactly where he hid the painting. Returning to his home after a spell in hospital, Simon is accosted by Franck and his henchmen who torture him for the location of the painting. Accepting Simon's amnesia, Franck sends him to hypno-therapist Elizabeth who he hopes can retrieve the information from his memory.

A remake of a 2001 TV movie, 'Trance' lives up to its name by putting you under a couple of times, thanks to its uninvolving and clumsily handled narrative. Boyle and his scriptwriter, John Hodge, have created a crossword puzzle of a film but, thanks to a series of plot-holes and character inconsistencies, it's a crossword that's been filled in incorrectly. Snappy editing and glossy visuals can't hide the fact that "three across" stops making sense when Boyle later tackles "seven down". Of course, a messy plot doesn't necessarily make for a bad film, but that's really all 'Trance' has going for it, save for some impressive visuals from cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle.

None of the characters of this tale are remotely engaging or realistic. Cassell's character is interchangeable with the similarly cartoon villain he portrayed in 'Ocean's Twelve'. McAvoy never convinces as someone who is any sort of danger so it's hard for the viewer to engage with his plight. Most troubling is the treatment of Dawson's therapist, at times ascending to such heights of misogyny as to leave a nasty taste in the mouth. I'm fine with her explicit nudity, (arguably the most graphic of its kind in contemporary mainstream film and a welcome distraction for any heterosexual male viewers), it's the actions of her character that are troubling, especially given the film's third act reveal. The film-makers can't decide whether they're making a breezy caper movie or a dark and gritty crime flick. 'Trance' is mildly enjoyable when it goes for the former approach, downright nasty when it veers further into the latter in the film's second half.
Boyle shot this film while working on the opening ceremony for last year's London Olympics and it feels very much a side project, made just to remind us Boyle is still around. Do we care anymore?

This is definitely one of my favorites so far. Great job Danny Boyle. The film reminded me of movies like Memento, Wild Things, and RockNRolla. I could have seen Guy Ritchie or Chris Nolan direct the film. Great twits and turns and definitely not predictable. This is film that you would have to pay close attention to. The performances by all 3 leads are amazing. I definitely recommend the film. I hope Rosario Dawson gets an Oscar nomination for it.