There’s no sign of From Dusk Till Dawn, Sin City or Alita in Robert Rodriguez’s new sci-fi film. Even Ben Affleck plays like a sleepwalker in Hypnotic.
The origin story of Robert Rodriguez’s new science fiction film reads more twisty than its script. For 20 years, the Sin City and Alita director has been dreaming of the film adaptation, which was then paused three times, plunged into a legal dispute and the financier went bankrupt. Against all odds, Rodriguez completed the film.
At the Cannes Film Festival, he presented the result in the indulgent Midnight Screenings (by that time, you’re already cheering to stay awake in the cinema), but Hypnotic turned out to be more boring than you could expect from a Robert Rodriguez film. The sleepwalking Ben Affleck is partly to blame for that.
In the sci-fi film, Ben Affleck stumbles upon a conspiracy
On paper, Affleck has snagged his own little Inception knock-off, with a tidy 80-million budget, a seasoned cult director and, in the shape of Alice Braga, a colleague who can make something out of even the slimmest script.
Affleck plays Daniel Rourke, an investigator whose daughter has been kidnapped. Much like John Travolta’s grieving dad in In the Body of the Enemy, he is haunted by flashbacks to that day. While observing a planned robbery, he notices The Dark Knight bank manager William Fichtner subjugating strangers to his will like puppets with just a few words. With the help of fortune teller Diana Cruz (Alice Braga), Rourke gets to the bottom of it.
The trailer for Hypnotic:
At some point in Hypnotic, a skyline really does bend across the sky, like in Inception, and anyone who thought Doctor Strange showed the Billo version of that is witnessing an unimagined effects bonanza in Rodriguez. This is how implausible and unmotivated the semi-surreal spectacle bursts into the film.
The Inception moment also seems contrived because Hypnotic is otherwise a fairly down-to-earth sci-fi thriller. It draws its dreamlike atmosphere primarily from bizarre situations: a woman undressing in the middle of the street; two cops holding each other at gunpoint. Hypnotic can’t compete with Nolan’s dream worlds anyway, which doesn’t make the film any worse in itself.
Hypnotic is a big disappointment from Tarantino buddy Rodriguez
Hypnotic is a huge disappointment because Rodriguez tells it like a 90-minute exposition orgy that stops when it really gets going. Unlike his associate Quentin Tarantino, you don’t usually watch Rodriguez films for the dialogue (unless it’s by Frank Miller or Tarantino himself), but for spectacular violent interludes, inventively staged action and memorable character moments. Hypnotic offers none of these, but sinks into the tedious explanation of its sci-fi concept without making us understand why anyone should care.
After the surprisingly good sports shoe drama Air – Der große Wurf, Hypnotic proves to be a setback for Ben Affleck’s comeback. Affleck lacks what really strong action stars and leading men like Tom Cruise, Jason Statham or even Gerard Butler are made of. They rise above weakly written characters and fill the resulting gap with the concentrated power of their star persona. Which sometimes leaves the impression that they always play the same character. Hypnotic needs such a star to be halfway entertaining.
