Ben Affleck stars in the new film, “Hypnotic.” Experienced audiences lament the recent eradication of the mid-budget character-driven drama due to blockbuster franchises and generic streaming entertainment. But it goes beyond that. Tight, low-budget, mid-length action thrillers with sci-fi or supernatural plot hooks aren't faring much better in the current industry. Therefore, even a casual fan of the genre could raise an interested eyebrow upon hearing that, after over a decade of working largely in television or on films with a strong Y.A. flair, the dynamic director Robert Rodriguez has a Ben Affleck-led suspense thriller called "Hypnotic" in theaters.
Affleck portrays Donald Rourke. Rourke is a detective who was severely scarred by the disappearance of his little daughter a number of years before. He and his team are on a stakeout one day when they come across a chilly-voiced older man (William Fichtner). His cryptic words hypnotize a few helpless onlookers and convince them to commit a brutal bank robbery. Rourke beats Fichtner's character to the safe deposit box he wants. He discovers a Polaroid of his own daughter inside, along with a mysterious note scrawled beneath it.
He connects with psychic Diana Cruz (Alice Braga) through a phone message. She describes the existence of "hypnotics," potent creatures who have the ability to manipulate others through their words and ideas. It just so happens that Affleck has a psychic firewall that shields him from the effects. But his partner doesn't. Rourke and Diana have to to flee to Mexico. This is after a graphic incident in which Rourke's partner tries to kill them by severing his own wrist from a handcuff.
It would have been plenty if the entire film was these two simply moving from one action scene to another. After all, Rodriguez has always excelled as an action director and camera director. But he's aiming higher than that with this. You can see that the director, who has his own studio in Austin, Texas, where the film takes place, is going for a Christopher Nolan production variant as Rourke begins to see a Mexican street extending into the air and curving.
This is, arguably, biting off more than “Hypnotic” can comfortably chew, both conceptually and for the production. When Affleck meets a posse of psychics dressed in all red jackets like lobsters. As the scenario veers into the familial sentimentality-with-shootout territory, the goofiness quotient increases. But the movie is, if nothing else, ruthlessly efficient. It delivers its crowd-pleasing bits that truly starving suspense genre hounds, at least, won’t necessarily mind
I would contend that a late summer release, embraced with open arms after a season of movies striving that much higher but probably falling that much lower, would have been better for something as ridiculous but steadfastly amusing as this. Although it was written in 2002, Inception, a movie about a disturbed father striving to reunite with his family by solving a reality-altering mystery, still casts a large shadow over it. There's something refreshing about Rodriguez imitating Christopher Nolan's shtick without maintaining such a straight face for anyone who may have grown tired of his dry self-seriousness with 2020's boring Tenet. Affleck's frown may be a hindrance, but Rodriguez is unmistakably directing while grinning.
