Butler's Cinema Scene

“TRANCE”  My rating: C- (Opening wide on April 12)

101 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Danny Boyle is like that little girl with the curl.  When’s he’s good (“Trainspotting,” “Shallow Grave,” “28 Days Later,” “`127 Hours”) he’s very good.

And when he screws up – as with “A Life Less Ordinary” and now “Trance” – he’s awful.

“Trance” is a crime thriller so overthought and overwrought  that it no longer makes any sense.

It begins with London auction house underling Simon (James McAvoy) attempting to save a precious Goya painting from a gang of crooks who have taken over the premises. In the process he gets banged on the noggin and awakens with no memory of what he’s done with the painting.

This is particularly galling to Frank (Vincent Cassel), the creepily threatening chief robber. You see, Simon was in on the caper and was to have delivered the painting for a fat cut of the proceeds. And now we’re supposed to believe he forgot where he put the goods?

After yanking out all of Simon’s fingernails, Frank is forced to admit that this may be a genuine case of amnesia. He sends Simon to hypnotherapist Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson), hoping that she can unlock the secrets in her patients’ skull.

Rosario Dawson

Up to this point the screenplay by Joe Ahearne and John Hodge opens up some intriguing possibilities.  Is Simon’s amnesia for real or is he trying to outwit his criminal cohorts? Is the hypnotherapist there to help him or is she hoping to get a piece of the action from the looming Frank?

But “Trance” just gets more and more complicated, with layer upon layer of possibilities. It’s like an even more incoherent “Inception.”

Vincent Cassell (right)

What’s worse, Boyle and his cast make absolutely no emotional connection with their audience. The movie is like an exercise in diversionary narrative, with complications for the sake of complications and a chilly ice cube at its center.

Boyle is a technical adept filmmaker, and “Trance” often looks great. But in the end it’s all fancy icing applied to a hat box. That’s not enough to make it a cake.

 | Robert W. Butler