Oh Danny Boyle, how do I love thine films? Let me count the ways. From Shallow Grave to 127 Hours and everything in between, EVERYTHING, I find the filmography of Danny Boyle to be one of the most consistently brilliant and entertaining of any director working today. He’s definitely in my personal Top 10 of best directors, and long may it continue.
Every time that a new Danny Boyle film is released I am biased. I know this. I want it to do well. Thankfully, Boyle never seems to let me down and Trance is another resounding success.
The premise is fantastic fun. A classic painting being sold at auction is stolen by a gang, led by Francke (Vincent Cassel). Simon (James McAvoy) works at the auction house and may have some plan of his own that veers off the standard procedure. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Simon gets a nasty bump on his head. The painting is gone, Simon’s memory is gone and it seems that the whole thing was for nothing, which is where a hypnotherapist named Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson) comes into the equation. Perhaps she can help Simon, but to do that she has to get deep, deep inside his mind.
I’ve already debated and disagreed with people about Trance. Some people have been telling me that the more they thought about it the less they enjoyed it. They said it was highly flawed. Well, the more I think about it the more I can’t wait to buy it on Bluray and rewatch it and then rewatch it again. It was, for me, a perfect movie experience.
It IS flawed, granted, and there may well be plot holes that you could drive a truck through (but with so much of the film taking place in the minds of different characters I’m not sure if there’s any way to prove that), but that doesn’t detract from the style, energy and sheer cinematic greatness of the whole thing. Boyle, working from a cracking script by Joe Ahearne and John Hodge, takes a lot of simple and fairly unoriginal elements and works his magic on them to create something that feels fresh and new. This is thanks, in no small part, to the visual style and design of the movie. Yes, using reflections and lots of glass in a film dealing with a broken mind is pretty cliched, but Boyle then makes the decision to use a colour pallet more in line with the likes of Mario Bava and Dario Argento to add a lush dreaminess to everything. What could have been just another Britflick/crime movie becomes a work of art. On a purely visual level, I was reminded of Amer (a film I loathed that many others loved), and there aren’t many (any?) other modern crime thrillers that I can say that about.
The performances are great, across the board. McAvoy is fantastic in the lead role, easy enough to warm to (which is important, considering how things play out) and believably frustrated and confused by the journey to recollect his memories. Vincent Cassel is someone I like a lot of the time, but not always. He’s very good in this, and any film featuring him also gets bonus points for referencing Irreversible in the small way that this does. Rosario Dawson is perfect in every sense. Solid support comes from Danny Sapani, Matt Cross, Wahab Sheikh, Mark Poltimore and Tuppence Middleton, as well as one or two others.
There have been mixed reactions to Trance, as you can see from any handful of reviews, but I encourage people to check it out for themselves. It was unpredictable, interesting and damn entertaining. Which more than makes up for the minor failings, in my opinion.
DIRECTOR: DANNY BOYLE
WRITER: JOE AHEARNE, JOHN HODGE
STARS: JAMES MCAVOY, VINCENT CASSEL, ROSARIO DAWSON, DANNY SAPANI, MATT CROSS, WAHAB SHEIKH, MARK POLTIMORE, TUPPENCE MIDDLETON
RUNTIME: 101 MINS APPROX
COUNTRY: UK
Film Rating: 
