EYEWEAR'S FILM CRITIC JAMES A. GEORGE ON THE NEW DANNY BOYLE
The London Olympic ceremony was good, wasn’t it? Danny Boyle, kinetic director and recent national treasure, in my mind is the Hollywood underdog, so it’s with no pleasure that I feel I need to slap him – to inform that Trance is a blip in an otherwise remarkable career.
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| Cool Poster, Not So Cool Film |
The London Olympic ceremony was good, wasn’t it? Danny Boyle, kinetic director and recent national treasure, in my mind is the Hollywood underdog, so it’s with no pleasure that I feel I need to slap him – to inform that Trance is a blip in an otherwise remarkable career.
Perhaps
the greatest contribution this film will make is to film students as the
ultimate example of style over substance. The editing is a little misjudged and
hastily disorientating, the camera constantly canters and thus saturates, and
while the music sometimes weaves in effortlessly, it occasionally jars –
telling you exactly what to think during the film's wafting climax.
Trance is an
off-rail locomotive zooming along so stylishly that by the time my interest in
the characters had spiralled away, and the story became so painfully vague (yet
predictable concerning plot twists), all that was left was the oddly engaging
visceral mess that still stood a level above most of the cheeseburger Hollywood
action cluttering multiplexes. There’s also some dark humour that definitely
works until you realise the characters are being way too chummy considering
they were terrified for their lives just moments before.
James
McAvoy and Vincent Cassel apparently had fun making it. Their performances have
been bashed to a pulpy mess in the editing room, and only leading lady Rosario
Dawson ends up with some moments worthy of a show reel. In fact, I was
impressed by the way she saved certain sequences from being the filmic
equivalent of tinned spam.
If
I had lazily come across this on midnight television, I would have stayed up to
watch it, and not regretted that decision. As a Danny Boyle fan, excited by the
power of cinema as art and entertainment, I am much in need of a re-watch of
127 Hours to cleanse my Boyle palette.
James A. George is a young filmmaker and BA student in his final months at Kingston University, London. He is also the Eyewear film critic.
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