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With: Ben Affleck, Alice Braga, William Fichtner, J. D. Pardo, Hala Finley, Dayo Okeniyi, Jeff Fahey, Jackie Earle Haley
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Written by: Robert Rodriguez, Max Borenstein, based on a story by Robert Rodriguez
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Directed by: Robert Rodriguez
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MPAA Rating: R for violence
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Running Time: 92
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Date: 05/12/2023
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You're Getting Sleepy...
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
A surprisingly leaden dud from the normally kinetic filmmaker Robert Rodriguez, the sci-fi/action movie Hypnotic pushes its lost stars through reams of colorless exposition and a few chintzy-looking FX scenes.
Police detective Danny Rourke (Ben Affleck) is in therapy, trying to recover after the sudden disappearance of his young daughter, Minnie. He heads back to work with partner Nicks (JD Pardo), investigating a series of bank robberies in which the thief steals only a single safe-deposit box. But Rourke gets to the safe deposit box first and finds a strange clue: a photo of his own daughter.
At the scene, they encounter a man called Dellrayne (William Fichtner) who seems to be able to influence people to act against their own wills; he even causes two officers to shoot each other. The trail next leads Rourke to fortune teller Diana Cruz (Alice Braga), who agrees to help Rourke find his daughter. But they also must stop Dellrayne before he becomes too powerful.
It's not long into Hypnotic before it becomes clear that characters are doomed to take a back seat to the story. Despite mighty efforts by Affleck, Braga, and the others (including character actors Jackie Earle Haley and Jeff Fahey), they can never break out of their cardboard confinement.
Perhaps worse is that the story isn't very good. It feels like a discarded first draft by Christopher Nolan, trying to smush together concepts of "hypnotics," who can control people, and the resetting of one's brain, two ideas that don't logically connect. They seem randomly thrown together, used mainly to create artificial "twists" by upending whatever reality we happen to be in.
Then, these ideas are even further back-burnered by a movie that focuses on routine chases and fights. A deeply unsatisfying ending caps things off. Normally Rodriguez seems like he's at least having fun while making his movies, but with Hypnotic, it feels as if the weight of the world is on his brain.
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