Danny Boyle is back and mixing up his filmography once again, this time with a remake of 2001 British TV heist film titled TRANCE.
Starring James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson, and Vincent Cassel, the project looks to push beyond the boundaries of a typical heist film with there being multiple heists going on at the same time. There’s the greater heist of a group of criminals (led by Cassel) and a fine art auctioneer (McAvoy) stealing a painting, there’s McAvoy’s own heist of the painting post-heist, and once McAvoy is hit on the head and loses his memory there’s the heist perpetrated by Cassel with the assistance of Dawson’s hypnotist character of McAvoy’s mind itself.
Which means the question then becomes: just how deep does the rabbit hole go?
UK viewers can find out the answer to that question on March 27th. The rest of us may have to wait a bit longer, so make sure to stay tuned for those worldwide release dates.
Plot recap: Fine art auctioneer Simon (McAvoy), in league with a gang led by underworld boss Franck (Cassel), plots the audacious theft of a masterpiece by Goya from a major public auction. When Simon double-crosses the gang during the robbery, Franck retaliates violently and knocks him unconscious. In the aftermath of the heist, Simon sticks stubbornly – and perhaps shrewdly – to his claim that the violent trauma has left him with no memory of where he stashed the artwork. Unable to coerce the painting’s location from Simon, Franck and his associates reluctantly join forces with a charismatic hypnotherapist (Dawson) in a bid to get him to talk. But as they journey deeper into Simon’s jumbled psyche the boundaries between reality and hypnotic suggestion begin to blur and the stakes rise faster and far more dangerously than any of the players could have anticipated.