- Script quality: ?!!?!?
- Acting quality: 8/10
- Number of martinis needed to understand it: > 12
- Overall feeling afterwards: ?!??!?! Maybe…6/10?? Mostly for eye candy, though.
Danny Boyle, as a rule, has never led me astray. The man is a directing god. As soon as you add a Scotsman to the mix things get even more watchable (see: “TRAINSPOTTING,” SHALLOW GRAVE“). You can see, then, why I went into this James McAvoy vehicle – with a delicious side of Vincent Cassel, and the universal eye candy of Rosario Dawson, for good measure – feeling ridiculously optimistic. Oh, Danny Boyle, the light, the light is faaa-aaaa-diiiiing…
[ Watch the red band trailer for “TRANCE” here. ]
Let’s start with the plot. Sounds easy to do, right? Yeah. Not so much.
McAvoy plays Simon Newton, an affable young fellow with a delectable accent who works at a swanky London auction house, where pieces of art are sold off at obscene costs on a daily basis. We’re told, through his first-person narration, that as valuable as these pieces of art may be, their training has taught them that no painting is worth a human life; they therefore have stringent training in order to react quickly and safely in the event of a heist. Which is nice, really. On top of dental and health coverage, and a little paid vacation time each year, What To Do In The Event Of A Heist Training is something every decent job should offer.
Boyle wastes precisely zero time cutting to the action, which is a good thing in that you’re sucked in right away, but is a bad thing because the action becomes immediately relentless and impossibly convoluted. Still, there’s some cast nudity to which one can look forward, so all is not lost.
McAvoy’s lovely Scottish narration carries us into a day during which Goya’s “The Three Witches” is being auctioned off. I’ve seen the painting in person (weirdly enough, in Scotland – see? Danny loves that country!), and I have no idea why anyone would bid a bazillion pounds sterling on it, but that’s precisely what happens here: despicably wealthy people holding up placards with numbers on them to indicate that their wallet is deeper than the person’s next to them, and the people who drive me insane – those too lazy to even be arsed to attend an auction and instead get some lackey to take their bids by phone – driving up the price as the seconds pass. Anyway, this is all moot, because in a moment, there will be a Major Art Heist. Handling Art Heists, as we’ve mentioned, is something for which our Simon is Well Trained, and he lets said Training take over. As masked gunmen burst into the prissy crowd, tossing smoke grenades and hollering threats, Simon employs his Training and immediately seizes the ugly Goya canvas, hauls ass down a back corridor where everyone else seems to have abandoned their Anti-Heist Training while they run willy–nilly instead, and goes through the motions of saving the painting. He tucks the framed canvas into a big black bag that looks an awful lot like what pizza delivery folks use, then saunters into a back room and heads toward this magical slot into which, in the Event Of A Heist, a painting can be slipped, landing in a drop safe below, thus safeguarding the work of art, although I fail to see how this would placate a determined art thief, who would now have no reason not to kill the poor sap that just made the sought-after masterpiece impossible to steal. That’s pretty much what happens here: McAvoy gets within inches of sending that Goya down the Chute Of Safety when he’s caught up to be Franck (Vincent Cassel), possibly the sexiest criminal on earth, brandishing a gun and demanding the painting be turned over. In a seemingly bizarre twist, McAvoy hesitates, not following his Training which ought to out his own life above a crappy Goya throwaway, but rather grabbing one of the auction house security dude’s cattle-prod-like taser and promptly zapping Franck. Not enough to knock Franck out, mind you; just enough to piss him off, which is of course what you want to do to a sexy French art thief with a gun.
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