Mesmerising
WTF? Robert Rodriguez’s bonkers, nigh unfathomable and entirely good time lunacy is, indeed, hypnotising.
Hypnotic
Director: Robert Rodriguez • Writers: Robert Rodriguez, Max Borenstein
Starring: Ben Affleck, Alice Braga, William Fichtner, JD Pardo, Jeff Fahey, Jackie Earle Haley, Dayo Okeniyi, Hala Finley
USA • 1hr 35mins
Opens Hong Kong May 11 • IIB
Grade: C
hypnosis [ hip-noh-sis ]
noun, plural hyp·no·ses [hip-noh-seez]
1. an artificially induced trance state resembling sleep, characterised by heightened susceptibility to suggestion.
That’s exactly what happens in Hypnotic, except while at this movie the suggestion we’re susceptible to is believing this is a good one. It is not. But it is a good time at the movies, you know what I mean? Because no word of a lie, “WTF?” will be be the first thing out of your mouth when the lights come up after Robert Rodriguez’s – at his Rodriguez-iest as director, writer, producer, editor and cinematographer – batshit sci-fi mystery thriller that also features Ben Affleck at his most somnolent. For a guy who’s such a strong storyteller and filmmaker himself (Air, Argo, Gone Baby Gone), and frequently a shiny gem as a supporting player (Shakespeare in Love, The Last Duel) he continues to take utterly baffling acting gigs: Reindeer Games? Pearl Harbor? Paycheck? The Accountant? Ben, Ben, Ben… what are you thinking? Okay, I can see the appeal of working with John Woo, and most of his roles have been harmlessly rote. But when he goes for wacky, move the fuck out the way. Go big or go home, I guess. Hypnotic got strong reviews out of SXSW, the festival in Rodriguez’s backyard, as a WIP. What’s in the beer down there? Clearly there have been massive changes since.
Look into my eyes…
Co-written by Rodriguez and Max Borenstein, who penned the recent American Godzilla films (!) and HBO’s stellar Lakers drama Winning Time (!!), Hypnotic is a hot mess of mixed genres, acrobatic narrative and exposition dumps that recalls The Matrix, Star Wars (huh?), Get Out (what’s that now?), Inception (hoo boy), Transcendence (oh dear, don’t do that), Reminiscence (really don’t do that), Trance (make it stop), Scanners (for the love of humanity, I beg you) about people with special mind control powers who work for Division (it’s always “Division”) to, I don’t know, achieve world domination. But nothing is as it seems. Dun dun duuuuun!
Just in case you couldn’t figure it out, we begin with Austin cop Danny Rourke’s (Affleck) eye opening in a therapist’s office as she rhythmically taps her notepad (seriously, guys?). His daughter was famously kidnapped three years earlier – no body, no motive for the snatcher – and now he’s brooding. You can tell he’s brooding because he cut from classic wounded noir detecive cloth (his jaw is getting a workout) and he has one expression throughout the film. Mid-session his partner Nicks (JD Pardo, The Contractor, Mayans MC) calls him to a bank heist and Rourke runs into a dude called Dellrayne, payed by GOAT That Guy William Fichtner, still best know as the grateful oil rig worker-slash-astronaut in Armageddon. Dellrayne is putting a wham-wham on everyone and breaking into safe deposit boxes. But why is a photo of Rourke’s daughter in the box? To find out, Rourke (characters like this are always addressed only by their surnames) reaches out to shady fortune teller Diana Cruz (Alice Braga, The New Mutants). Then they kiss in paranoid hacker River’s (Dayo Okeniyi, Apple series See) bunker. What the hell is going on?
Truly, the less you know about Hypnotic going in the better, because at the end of the day? This was a great watch. It’s not as clever as it thinks it is, and it’s about as deep as a kiddie pool, but no one ever said a movie had to be “good” to be an enjoyable night out. Hypnotic is just nutty enough and paced well enough that it never sags; the exposition lands every 20 minutes like clockwork, the plot twists are more and more gleefully bananas each passing moment, and Rodriguez manipulates his images as creatively as ever. Also? Screw your internal logic! By the time the goddamned Lawnmower Man shows up with a shotgun you’ll be giddy with bewilderment, or addle-brained. Maybe both. Probably both.
Rodriguez, bless his heart, is known as a stylist; a director creative enough to mine visual gold from modest resources, as famously demonstrated in his US$7,000 feature debut El Mariachi. And for most of his career (the family-friendly Spy Kids films aside) he’s leaned into that cheap, cheerful, grindhouse aesthetic and taken advantage of his almost innate, pure filmmaking skills to do the heavy lifting of creating character and telegraphing themes, however thin. Rodriguez understands the game, and Hypnotic is another game move. Come on, Alita: Battle Angel is every bit the hot mess this is and it was every bit as entertaining. He forces us to find the glee inside the lunacy by sheer force of will, and it’s the reason something like Hypnotic 1) gets made and 2) keeps you watching long after you realise 1) you know where it’s going and 2) you still have no idea how you got there. Dear Lord let that Machete Kills in Space movie really happen. — DEK