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All of this is very silly, but there’s nothing wrong with that! In fact, “Hypnotic” would be a lot better off if it learned to lean into that silliness. Instead, Rodriguez keeps everything very dour, and while he injects some life here and there via action beats (the bank robbery scene is quite well-staged, as are several chase sequences), the filmmaker can never really get “Hypnotic” working.
What he does do, however, is throw in more than a few Nolan-like touches. Rourke is fond of brandishing a Polaroid just like Guy Pearce in “Memento,” and since the film deals with perception and reality, Rodriguez creates some shots that are quite liberally borrowed from Nolan’s “Inception.” Buildings that are revealed to not actually be there crumble, and there are multiple occasions where Affleck’s character looks up only to see upside-down roadways in the sky — you know, just like in “Inception.”
If “Hypnotic” would just stop being so serious and start having some fun with all of this, the flaws would be less noticeable. Indeed, part of what makes Fitchner’s performance so memorable here is that he seems to be the only actor having a good time with the material. Whenever “Hypnotic” sidelines him so that Rourke and Diana can share more dull exposition-heavy scenes, the film sags. And that sagging only gets worse in the film’s final act, where the script hits us over the head repeatedly as it tries to explain everything that happened. The thing is, we don’t need the explanation. We get it. It just wasn’t very interesting to begin with.
/Film Rating: 5 out of 10
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