Hypnotic is paradoxical in its execution. At best, it’s intriguing yet mediocre. At worst, it’s ridiculously baffling.
Ben Affleck stars as Danny Rourke, a police detective dealing with the abduction of his daughter. At the beginning of the film, he’s trying to stop a bank robbery perpetrated by a criminal (William Fichtner).
Rourke believes that the criminal has a connection to his daughter being kidnapped, and so he enlists the expertise of a fortuneteller (Alice Braga). However, Rourke gets more than he bargained for when he discovers the fortuneteller is known as a Hypnotist, and she’s been trained by a secret government program that can control people’s minds.
Together the two of them head to Mexico, where the fortuneteller meets up with her mentor (Jackie Earle Haley). He tells them that the criminal is searching for a dangerous weapon called Domino which serves as this movie’s MacGuffin.
The movie was directed and co-written by Robert Rodriguez who made the Spy Kids and Sin City movies, and just like those films, he once again demonstrates a talent for hi-tech audacity. However, he threatens to overstuff this vehicle with either too much plot or too much action. As for the action, it’s just a series of cliched chases, shootouts, and explosions that we could see done better in a dozen other films.
It seems to me this movie is trying to fit in the vein of a Christopher Nolan film, but unlike Nolan, Rodriguez unsuccessfully leads his characters in a maze where both they and we are not sure if there is a satisfying way to get out. I’m not sure I could pass a test on this movie. Hypnotic would be better if it had a much stronger, coherently structured screenplay.
This film has a chaotic, frenetic, and jarring tone.
Affleck seems determined to give this character the depth he thinks it deserves, but each time he makes a discovery, he ends up befuddled, and we’re right there with him.
If this movie relied more on a logically consistent story and less on being disorganized, Hypnotic would’ve had me under its control.
Grade: C+
(Rated R for violence.)
