Hypnotic review: Robert Rodriguez directs Ben Affleck in a pleasant Christopher Nolan homage
For director known for ambitious highs like Sin City and Alita: Battle Angel, it's a surprisingly normal but welcome departure

Hypnotic may be Robert Rodriguez’s most conventional movie since 1998's The Faculty, and that’s not at all a bad thing. While his ambition can lead him to delirious highs like Sin City and Alita: Battle Angel, the writer-director-excess-multitasker is also extremely prone to over-rushed, half-assitude like Machete Kills, or near-endless failed attempts to make another kids’ movie as great as the first Spy Kids. His proposed remakes of Heavy Metal, Fire And Ice, and Red Sonja may remain in development hell, but instead he’s done the most surprising thing that he could. And that’s to make a star-driven cop/heist/chase movie with a sci-fi twist. It’s his version of a Christopher Nolan original, except for the fact that it costs far less and everything gets explained by the end.
The movie begins, like the TV show Lost, with an opening eye. A pen taps rhythmically, like a metronome. Ben Affleck is in therapy. He’s Rourke, a cop attempting to prove he’s fit for duty again following the disappearance—likely abduction—of his daughter. Ready or not, the events of the day suck him in regardless, as his partner Nicks (J.D. Pardo) just got a mysterious tip about a bank that’s about to be robbed of exactly one safe deposit box. Since that would follow a recent pattern of similar crimes, it seems legit.
Just like every audience member who’s ever seen a cop movie before, Rourke almost immediately fingers William Fichtner as a primary suspect the moment the latter walks onscreen. But he can’t bust him without proof, and all Fichtner’s mysterious character seems to be doing is walking up to people and making post-hypnotic suggestions. They’re powerless to stop from acting on his command, and he seems to have beautifully choreographed every person he meets to thwart Rourke on a large scale. But not before Rourke finds a clue that his daughter may be involved, and his opponent’s name is apparently Dellrayne.
The less said about what ensues, the better, beyond the fact that Rourke teams up with a former associate of Dellrayne’s named Diana (Alice Braga), who moonlights as a scammy faux-psychic. Mysteries unfold, and like Inception and Tenet, the story has something of a symmetrical structure. Anyone familiar with twisty thrillers may see a thing or two coming, but probably not the full picture.