The investigation is conducted by psychics – Weekend
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The Hypnotic is released, a high-budget science fiction thriller invented by Robert Rodriguez 20 years ago, but even today it turned out to be worthy of the closest attention.
Trying to prevent an extremely strange bank robbery (all participants and eyewitnesses of which are either bound by mutual responsibility, or simply do not know what they are doing), Austin police officer Daniel Rourke (Ben Affleck) finds in one of the hacked cells a photograph of his own daughter, whose he has been mournfully and concentratedly working on the psychotherapist’s couch for several years now. Guessing that it was for his soul that the “outstanding hypnotist” Lev Delirane (William Fichtner) behind the robbery “arrived in the village with a session”, Rourke finds himself in the wonderful world of mental phenomena – “hypnotics” that can inspire anything to anyone. And at the inaudible snap of invisible fingers, the next part of the television series “Experts are investigating” in the police head is switched straight to the finale of the “Battle of Psychics”.
“The cannonballs sang, and in the flames of the battle they got their own and enemies …” At first, the choice of such a plot by Robert Rodriguez may not seem the most obvious. But this is not so: throughout his career, Rodriguez was quietly, but quite consistently overwhelmed by a fiery passion – to be like one of his most favorite directors, John Woo, in everything. Rodriguez’s “Mexican trilogy” (Musician, Desperate, Once Upon a Time in Mexico) clearly inherited Rodriguez’s “Musician”, “Desperate”, “Once Upon a Time in Mexico” from his classic action films in the style of “heroes covered in blood” like “A Brighter Tomorrow”, “Hitman” and “Hardboiled”. , where any piano in the bushes hid a deadly firearms arsenal, and the heroes fired into the white light with two hands like a pretty penny, even having lost both eyes. In films about the adventures of Machete, he paid tribute to the beginning of his idol’s Hollywood period, from Hard Target to Blackjack. And looking at the funny escapades of “Spy Kids” or “Naughty” from the novel in “Four Rooms”, it became obvious that Rodriguez was well aware of the much less well-known incarnation of John Woo, who at the turn of the 70-80s of the last century turned into a in a kind of Hong Kong Vladimir Grammatikov, making funny family comedies like Follow the Star, Simple Jane to the Rescue and, most notably, Run Tiger Run. So it’s not surprising that as his most expensive project (Hypnotic cost $70 million, which is exactly 10,000 times the budget of his debut The Musician), Rodriguez simply decided to remake John Woo’s Hour of Reckoning based on the story Philip Dick, where the same Ben Affleck with the same facial expression was forced, in the process of escaping from himself to himself, to participate in a puzzling survival quest.
But not even 20 minutes pass (the “Hypnotic” film is generally not long, and against the backdrop of recent superhero movie comics, it seems almost like a short film), as a completely different kind of style comes to the fore. When it turns out that some powerful and mysterious Department is behind the games of the darkened mind; when the elements of the surrounding landscape begin to transform and bend before the eyes of the hero Affleck in the spirit of Escher’s puzzling graphic tricks; when he, who has completely lost touch with reality, is seated in a special chair and connected to his head with sensors that help to “remember everything”, and people in identical crimson jackets hastily build virtual scenery around; when black helicopters soar up in the middle of an open field, and the air currents from their propellers make ties flutter around the necks of serious men with pistols drawn … There is not the slightest doubt that the action has been transferred to the universe of Christopher Nolan. It would be time to talk not even about cinephilic homage, but about obvious and undisguised plagiarism, if not for one very significant circumstance. Rodriguez – and this is known for certain and documented – came up with “Hypnotic” at the very beginning of the 2000s, considered it his most beloved and cherished idea, and as far as Nolan was concerned, he could only be inspired then only by the film “Remember”. So one can perhaps imagine the expression on his face when “Inception” and “Conclusion” thundered down on the screens of the world. And now, with all the desire, nothing will be possible to prove: even if Rodriguez was once put in some kind of chair with sensors, the memories of this, of course, were hopelessly erased.
However, both Wu and Nolan, and Paul Verhoeven, who has not been mentioned until now (and in the film you can find a lot of references to Total Recall, especially with regard to female characters) can sleep peacefully. For Hypnotic is a film by Robert Rodriguez and no one else. If the notorious Department actually existed, this resilient indigo director, the eternal film prodigy with his head like a kerosene lamp on his shoulders, could rightfully take the place of the main boss there. He, like no one else, knows how to convince the viewer that everything he shoots is exceptionally good (largely because he himself is wholeheartedly sure of this). And seemingly hopelessly outdated and secondary history turns into a spectacle of the highest standard, and in addition, unexpectedly reusable. It makes sense to try to overcome the initial prejudice and return to the “Hypnotic” a few more times: with each subsequent viewing, the virtual scenery erected by the technical staff of the Department becomes more and more reliable and convincing. It’s like jogging somewhere along a treadmill, twisted with a Mobius strip, or playing your favorite computer game, in which every time there is a place for a new Easter egg. Pulse is normal, breathing is even. A voice from somewhere above or inside starts a monotonous countdown: ten… nine… eight… When it reaches zero, it will be possible to open your eyes. And to understand that you don’t want to watch any other movie in principle. And rewind to the beginning.
In theaters from 6 July
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