No trance: Ben Affleck’s new thriller fails to mesmerise

Hypnotic 93 mins, cert 15 ★★✩✩✩ Charlotte O’Sullivan

BEN AFFLECK has just directed and starred in a critical hit (Air). He’s about to appear in one of the buzziest blockbusters of the year (The Flash). Yet here’s an awkward reminder that as a leading man he leaves something to be desired. In Hypnotic, he’s mesmerisingly dull. He plays Austin cop Danny Rourke, whose daughter was snatched while they were at a playground. In the months that followed, his marriage fell apart.

We’re meant to believe Danny is in unfathomable pain. From first to last, though, he wears the aggrieved expression of a man who’s just watched his Lamborghini Urus get pranged. Everything may not be as it seems but you need to feel empathy for a character to follow them into a labyrinth, otherwise who cares when they get lost? Danny and his partner Nicks (J. D. Pardo) get a tip-off from Diana (Alice Braga), a woman who claims to be a psychic, about a bank robbery. Soon Danny is framed for murder and he and Diana have to go on the run. Hypnotic is a hodge-podge of every sci-fi narrative in which “reality” belongs in quote marks. Actors are meant to be expert manipulators, but Affleck and co failed to sell this nonsense. Who can resist Ben? Most of us, as it turns out.

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