‘I love you.. don’t ask me why…’
Listen, I don’t know why I love Ben Affleck, I just know that I do. I think it’s because I’m almost certain he would enjoy spending the evening with me and a pitcher of beer. And possibly Matt Damon too. Either way, I love the guy. Hypnotic is a film that nobody loved, however. Indeed, despite combining Affleck with Robert Rodriguez, a director who was once considered one of the most exciting in Hollywood, Hypnotic came and went in a flurry of poor reviews and an indifferent commercial performance. I will say this. It’s pretty good…
Danny Rourke (Affleck) is a veteran detective trying to find his missing daughter who may or may not have been kidnapped by a mysterious hypnotist named Dellrayne (William Fichtner). That’s about as far as I can go in terms of plot as the whole thing turns on its head in the second act and to reveal anything about that particular twist would be, and I don’t say this lightly, a dick move.
What I really enjoyed about Hypnotic is that despite the film being preposterous, everyone is playing this thing totally straight. Affleck’s eyebrows are never unfurrowed at any point. This is what a dumb, action movie should be. No winking at the camera. I want absolute nonsense played out as if everyone involved is making The Godfather. Fichtner makes for a genuinely unsettling villain. Alice Braga manages to keep a straight face whilst delivering some of the most egregious dialogue ever committed to film. The plot is complete tosh. Absolutely marvellous stuff.
I can see why most people didn’t like Hypnotic. Indeed, by almost every metric it is a bad film. But on the Affleck metric, the Affleck scale of zero to ten Afflecks, this is a six Affleck out of ten Afflecks film. Would watch again. No notes.
