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Released by: Fox
Released on: July 23, 2013.
Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: James McAvoy, Vincent Cassel, Rosario Dawson
Year: 2013
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The Movie:
Shot while Danny Boyle was working feverishly on the opening ceremonies of the Olympics that were held in London in 2012 and edited once that mammoth project was complete, 2013's Trance takes place in that same city where we meet Simon (James McAvoy). He works at an art auction house where an original Goya mysteriously goes missing. It seems that he was whacked on the head during the job and doesn't know where he put the incredibly valuable work of art.
This does not sit well a hotshot thug named Franck (Vincent Cassel), who tortures Simon pretty vigorously, but to no avail. The guy just flat out doesn't know where the painting is. So Franck, resourceful bastard that he is, turns to Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson), a hypnotherapist. His hope is that she'll be able to use her talents to revive memories now dormant in Simon's brain and they'll be able to find the painting. As she sets about doing just that, the movie twists and turns and gets increasingly bizarre as we try to figure out just what these three are really all about.
At times shockingly violent (heads are blown off, fingernails get yanked, a man gets shot in the balls, those types of things are common here), Trance is pretty much a modern take on traditional film noir elements wrapped up in a very modern pastiche of trippy visuals and booming electronica. That might sound like a horrible mix on paper but Boyle makes it work. Yes, the script does go to ridiculous extremes to keep us guessing and at times it feels a little bit like Memento for the attention deficit generation but Boyle's film is nothing if not relentlessly entertaining.
The film plays up the exploitative angle by ramping up the sex and violence but not at the cost of performances. All three of the principals involved in the shoot are excellent here, Cassel as always turning in a fairly maniacal turn but McAvoy and Dawson doing fine work in that regard as well. Dawson in particular uses sex as a weapon in a sense, which isn't surprising given her looks and her character type (she's a femme fatale) but she does it incredibly well here. Part of the credit for this goes to the camera man and the lighting crew but she vamps it up in this movie very nicely. McAvoy's character is, at least initially, confused and he portrays this believably. Of course, as all of this starts to shift and change into something else, well… let's just say the performances take on appropriately different turns.
The constant use of red herrings and back stabbings does get to be a bit much as the movie approaches its conclusion and the visuals just do not stop, giving the movie a tone best described as hyperactive. For the most part though, if this is style over substance it doesn't really matter when it's as wacky and entertaining and strange like this one is. It won't take a rocket scientist to figure out how it's all going to end (surprising, given how hard the storyline tries to keep deceiving the audience) but taken as the gritty, gnarly little piece of pulp fiction that it is, it makes for a good time at the movies.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The movie's hyper-stylized visuals look great on Blu-ray framed at 2.39.1 in AVC encoded 1080p high definition. Detail is exceptional and given that this was shot (mostly) on high end digital cameras, the digital to digital transfer means there's no print damage and that image is exceptionally clean. Skin tones look great, the movie's wonderfully bizarre use of color comes through perfectly and black levels are nice and deep. When different, lower end cameras are used for some scenes (to interesting artistic effect) the image quality can drop a bit, but that's how it's supposed to look and not a flaw in the disc. All in all, the transfer is a top notch effort from Fox.
Fox has included a crazy selection of language options here - the main English track is in DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 but there are Dolby Digital 7.1 Surround Sound options provided in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Thai and Turkish. If that weren't enough, there are subtitles in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Korean, Malay, Mandarin, Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Slovenian, Thai and Turkish. That's pretty multicultural, right there.
Let's get back to the lossless mix, because it is, in a word, excellent. Music swells up from all corners of the mix, while dialogue, depending on the scene, can come from the front (frequent) or the sides or rear of the mix (less frequent). It's the score though that really impresses. There's a lot of very layered and heavy electronic music used here to build atmosphere and tension and it all comes through with perfect clarity. It should go without saying that the levels are perfectly balanced and that there are no problems with hiss or distortion. This one will really give your surround system a good work out though, it's very active and detailed.
The extras start off with a thirty-four minute featurette entitled The Power of Suggestion which is broken down in to five parts (Kick Off / Danny's Film Noir / Hypnotherapy / The Look / The Final Rewrite) and which documents the making of the picture rather well. Here we cover the film noir influences that crept into the story and the visuals, the concept of hypnotherapy and how Boyle worked it into the movie, and how that in turn affected the look of the movie. There's also some good information on the scripting and editing processes as used in the movie as it was in production. There's some interesting footage and interview bits in here and this is quite a good way to learn more about the picture.
Also here is a fifteen minute piece called The Danny Boyle Retrospective in which the film's director discusses the different movies he's made up to this point in his career. It's interesting to hear his thoughts on certain projects but after the impressive making of featurette it seems a bit like a throwaway piece. Worth watching once, however, particularly for fans of his work.
The disc also contains a thirteen minute short film called Eugene directed by Spencer Susser, the man who made Hesher. Why exactly it's on this disc seems to be a bit of a mystery but it's a decent story about a man who checks into a hotel and learns that his laptop can now make his wishes reality. Of course, there's no way that will end well, and it doesn't. An odd and seemingly unrelated short but entertaining enough in its own right.
Rounding out the extras are seven deleted scenes running sixteen and a half minutes in length, a trailer for the feature and an EPK style Sneak Peek promotional spot. Menus and chapter stops are also included and as this is a combo pack release, you also get an Ultra Violet Digital Copy version of the movie.
The Final Word:
You could probably make the argument that Trance tries too hard with its twists and turns and consistently suspicious character quirks but if you look at it as a modern noir infused with some appreciably trippy hypnotherapy motifs, it actually works quite well. It certainly doesn't hurt that the movie is beautiful to look at nor does it hurt that the cast are all in top form. Fox's Blu-ray presents this odd but completely enjoyable movie in excellent shape and with some pretty solid extra features as well.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
[img]http://www.rockshockpop.com/screencaps/Trance/01-2.jpg[/img]
[img]http://www.rockshockpop.com/screencaps/Trance/01-2.jpg[/img]
